The reason is that not “Slavic peoples” went there, but immigrants from Asia

17:43, February 11, 2022Source: Meduza

The governor of the Kaluga region, Vladislav Shapsha, by his decree, limited the areas of the economy in which foreign citizens who received a patent for work will be able to work in the region in 2022, the regional administration reported .

Migrants were banned from working in retail and catering, including delivering groceries and serving drinks in bars. In addition, work in public transport, including taxis, and in recruitment agencies was banned. Local companies were given three months to bring “the number of employed foreign workers in line with this regulation.”

At the same time, the governor suspended the development of the state regional program “Providing assistance in the voluntary resettlement of compatriots living abroad in the Kaluga region” for 2022-2027. “The Kaluga Region is withdrawing from the program. <…> This will block the possibility of obtaining citizenship in a simplified manner for natives of Central Asia,” Vladislav Shapsha wrote in his Telegram channel.

The development was suspended due to the fact that the program “does not achieve the originally set goals,” the administration said in a statement. Since 2007, more than 90,000 people have come to the region under a simplified scheme since 2007. “In the first years of the program implementation, the results corresponded to the goal: the Slavs made up more than 80%. By 2022, the proportion of representatives of the Slavic peoples has decreased to 17%. Most of them were residents of the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus,” the administration said.

The Minister of Internal Policy of the Kaluga Region, Oleg Kalugin , believes that since 2018 the program “has ceased to meet its target indicators.” “Among those who received our citizenship, immigrants from the countries of Central Asia began to dominate, many of whom did not even bother to learn Russian. By 2021, their share was 65%. Exiting this program is a cardinal measure to solve the migration problem,” the minister said. He noted that the Kaluga region was the first among the regions of Russia to withdraw from the program.

At the same time, in the  materials of the regional administration on the program for the resettlement of compatriots, “Slavic peoples” are not mentioned (there is no such reference in the  materials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs about this program). Among the tasks are “reducing the shortage of labor resources”, “settlement and development of territories”, “increasing the migration influx of the population”. The documents note that migration “not only partially compensates for the natural decline in the population of the Kaluga region, but also helps to reduce this loss,” and if the program is terminated, “there will be a decrease in migration growth.”

On the same day, the governor of the Kaluga region visited the migration center in the Borovsky district. Shapsha said in a telegram that he arrived there without warning, and met a migrant who did not know the Russian language, but had a certificate of knowledge of the Russian language in his hands. “From today, all documents from migrants who, in fact, do not know our language, but provide “fake” certificates, will be sent by the migration center to the internal affairs bodies for verification,” the governor said. Earlier in February, Shapsha also announced that the region would significantly limit the number of patents issued to migrants.

(C)MEDUZA 2022