On July 31, the Russian State Duma adopted a bill that will require military registration upon obtaining a Russian passport and introduce possible termination of citizenship upon failure to register for military service. That bill follows quick on the heels of another, approved on July 23, that will introduce new mechanisms for deportation of migrants, allowing police – rather than a court – to decide while also introducing a register for those deemed to be residing illegally in Russia.
If both bills are signed similarly approved by the Russian parliament’s upper chamber and signed into law by Russian President Vladimir Putin, they will serve to ratchet up pressure on Central Asian migrants, among others, in Russia.
In late June, the Moscow Times ran an opinion piece penned by Russian human rights defender and lawyer Valentina Chupik with the title: “How Russia Plans to Make Life Hell For Migrants.” In the piece, Chupik was stark in her judgment of the legislation then-bubbling up in the Duma: “On Jun. 18, the State Duma passed the first reading of the draft law that will spark a migration crisis that will only pour fuel on the fires of corruption.”
As reported by Russian state-owned media, “According to the bill, any foreign citizen having no legal right to remain in Russia will be considered to be in the deportation mode starting the day his data is entered in the registry of individuals under supervision.”
Individuals placed under “supervision” will be required to notify the Interior Ministry of their location, and subject to an array of restrictions, including a ban on buying real estate, driving, opening a bank account, or getting married.
Not mentioned in Russian state-owned media is the extensive list of violations the Internal Affairs Ministry would be able to cite as grounds for deportation, from “participation in or organization of a mass gathering of citizens” to disobeying the “legitimate orders of police officers.”
Speaking to Current Time on July 25, Chupik said “in 19 years of human right activities in Russia, I have never seen a single legitimate request by police officers to labor migrants.”
She noted that a “mass gathering” could refer to anything from a crowd outside a packed mosque to a queue at a cafe or a funeral procession.
This spate of laws – including one adopted on July 30 that limits the number of SIM cards a person can buy – will directly affect Central Asian migrants and Central Asian communities in Russia. While Central Asian labor migrants are not a monolith, they face an increasingly complex and punitive web of regulations in Russia that has accelerated in the aftermath of Crocus City Hall attack in March.
The exact number of Central Asian migrants working in Russia fluctuates throughout the year and sources are not always consistent. In March, the Russian Interior Ministry, as reported by the BBC, said that there were “about 10.5 million migrants from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan working in Russia.” That figure is much larger than typical numbers (it’s possible that estimate includes ethnic Central Asians with Russian citizenship).
For reference, in 2021 a record-breaking 3 million Tajiks were reported to have entered Russia (thought that figure included repeat entries). As Niginakhon Saida reported for The Diplomat earlier this year “In the first quarter of 2022, for example, 2.3 million [Uzbek] citizens were working abroad,” with the bulk of them traveling to Russia. Kyrgyzstan also sends significant numbers of migrants; the most recent estimate was 1.2 million people.
Many more have acquired Russian citizenship. Dual citizenship is not officially recognized by the governments of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, or Uzbekistan – but it is recognized by Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. As I noted in an article in 2022:
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, hundreds of thousands of Central Asians have obtained Russian citizenship, though exact figures are elusive. For example, in 2018 Kyrgyz authorities claimed that since independence more than half a million Kyrgyz had obtained Russian citizenship. At the time, officials noted that the pace of Kyrgyz seeking Russian citizenship had slowed because of the country’s accession to the Eurasian Economic Union, which simplified the process of migrating to Russia for work. Meanwhile, it appears that the numbers of Tajiks seeking Russian citizenship in recent years has grown. In 2021 alone, Russian authorities said more than 100,000 Tajiks had obtained Russian citizenship, in contrast to around 30,000 back in 2016.
In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Central Asian governments warned their citizens against participating. Nevertheless, Russia has continued to recruit soldiers among migrants, and that effort is reflected in the recent legislation.
The importance of these migrants to their home countries is reflected in the volume of remittances they send back home. According to the World Bank, personal remittances received by Tajikistan climbed down from a 2022 record high of 49.9 percent of GDP to 38.4 percent in 2023. (Editor’s note: Remittances are typically discussed as a percentage of GDP, but remittances themselves are not actually a part of gross domestic product, which measures the value of all final goods and services produced in a country. We just use GDP as a point of reference to illustrate the scale of remittances.) Remittances to Kyrgyzstan have declined for two years now, from a 2021 high of 32.6 percent of GDP to 18.6 percent in 2023. Like Tajikistan, for Uzbekistan remittances hit a high point in 2022, at 20.6 percent of GDP, dropping in 2023 to 17.7 percent.
With these additional regulations targeting migrant workers in Russia, we can expect the numbers of Central Asian migrants to fall, and therefor see a further contraction in remittances – but only so much. Central Asians have limited options when it comes to working abroad (though there are certainly efforts to diversify) and the well-worn pathways to and known networks in Russia remain attractive.
But Russian lawmakers aren’t finished. According to Kloop, another new bill has been introduced in the State Duma that would “prohibit labor migrants from working in the areas of school and preschool education, medicine and pharmaceuticals, passenger transportation, and also from engaging in ‘certain types of activities that bring in above-average income or may be in demand by citizens of the Russian Federation.’”
Meanwhile, the ever-worsening mistreatment of Central Asians poses a security risk for Russia, as terrorist groups like the Islamic State have taken to highlighting such incidents in their propaganda, seeking to radicalize the migrant population. So far, Moscow has been willfully blind to the fact that its crackdown on migrants may actually increase the odds of another Crocus City Hall tragedy.