A new record for the reception of migrants. Is the population dissatisfied?
Oh, these intolerant Russians ...
According to the opinion poll conducted by the Levada Center, xenophobic and nationalist sentiments sharply increased in Russia. The proportion of people who would like to restrict their residence or stay in a country of a certain ethnic group increased from 54% to 71% in just a year. And this is after over the course of several consecutive years the level of such sentiments in the country fell.
Let's clarify something right away. The question is not about the fact that 71% of the population does not want to see people from other countries in our country. For example, gypsies would like to limit about forty percent of those surveyed in their right to stay. The share of those who do not want to see Chinese in our country has grown from 15 to 39 percent. People from Central Asia do not like now not 19-ty, but 32-m percent. And so on. But the sum of those who would like to restrict entry to at least someone now is 71%. An impressive number.
Of course, if there was democracy in our country, the authorities would react to these moods of the population not with endless mantras about how we need migrants, but with measures to limit the entry of different kinds of foreigners into the country for work and permanent residence. But here, as you know, democracy is somehow strange, not quite “direct,” so the authorities immediately rush into explanations and significantly shrugs their shoulders: oh, these Russians don’t understand the obvious things, they decided to doubt the benefits of multinationality.
Our reality is somewhat different: according to the data of the Russian University of Economics named after Plekhanov, the current year may be a record for the number of migrants accepted by Russia. In total, according to some estimates, their number will reach 12 million people, which will be approximately 8% of the total population of the country. Note that we are talking about migrants who do not yet have the status of a citizen of Russia. How many migrants are already our fellow citizens and do not fall into any lists is a separate issue, but it is enough for us that Russia takes the fourth place in the absolute number of migrants accepted.
Strictly speaking, it cannot be said that the number of migrants in us was somehow off-scale. In the United States, experts have about 50 million migrants. In the relatively small population of Saudi Arabia - 37 million. Russia with twelve million migrants shares fourth place with Germany, followed by Great Britain and the UAE with eight.
The percentage of the absolute leaders of the Gulf countries is the UAE with 88% of migrants, Qatar with 65% and Bahrain with 48%. And against the background of these indicators, we do not look so bad ...
Numbers are nothing, details are everything!
True, there are some nuances. In particular, the Gulf countries are trying to attract mainly migrants from Muslim countries. India stands somewhat apart, but tens of millions of Muslims live there, and it’s hard to say what percentage of the large enough Indian diaspora in the UAE or Qatar are Muslims. In addition, there is one extremely important difference from our case - there is very strict legislation. Therefore, a migrant who is seen in improper behavior or is convicted of a crime can easily be cut off his hand or head. Partly because of this, the local population does not feel much negative towards migrants: they behave in a law-abiding manner, they try not to conflict with the authorities or the indigenous population, local traditions, albeit on pain of death, are respected and respected.
In fact, it’s quite difficult to say why right now the share of radically-minded Russians has jumped up sharply to “pre-Crimean” indicators. Many attribute this to a general deterioration in the economic situation, but then it is difficult to understand why in 2015-2018, this share was steadily decreasing. What, the economic situation of Russians then rapidly improved? Alas, nothing of the kind: in some years of this period, the level of our well-being fell much more significantly than now.
The following version looks much more plausible: then, against the backdrop of Crimean euphoria, trust in the current government was simply going through the roof. Of course, her arguments regarding the need to attract migrants were perceived by society much better, they believed in it and thought that the authorities understood what they were doing.
Probably, everything changed precisely after the pension reform and some other government initiatives, which completely exhausted the credit of trust in the authorities. People began to perceive much more critically the information that pours onto them from television screens, and what used to seem like a good argument, when critically examined, suddenly turned out to be a propaganda dummy.
Of course, economic problems affected too. This was especially evident when respondents were asked the question of the possibility of restricting labor migration: 72% of respondents agreed with this measure. And this, mind you, in spite of the endlessly sounding mantras that our economy will not survive without migrants, that our cities will drown in mud, that some industries will collapse, and so on. People have ceased to trust this “Yaroslavna’s crying”, and not without reason: as practice shows, many countries dispense with almost no migrants (especially labor), but the streets there will be cleaner than Moscow ...
A pinch of intolerance
In general, the endless talk of fatalities for Russia of Russian nationalism is becoming very doubtful against the background of some countries in which national movements came to power. And a particularly striking example is India.
After the nationalist party Bharata Janata Party came to power in India in 2014, this country finally emerged from the long string of crises and economic impasse in which, strictly speaking, all the last years of the rule of the Indian National Congress have been. At the same time, multinational and multiconfessional India did not fall apart, did not blaze with a series of national or inter-confessional conflicts, did not slide into a civil war, but develops quite calmly and confidently. Moreover, she even became a leader in terms of economic growth and challenged China in this field, which until recently seemed unthinkable ...
It is clear that in Russia this topic is strictly taboo, and even when discussing the issue of foreign migration, the political component immediately comes to the fore.
Although, maybe this is not bad. Given how our government “loves” reforms and “knows how to” reform, it is better for it to really not touch the national question ...
But in the future, of course, we should return to it. And at least in matters of migration to restore order. As well as in matters of criminal law and responsibility.
Maybe then we will be much calmer about the appearance of Tajiks and Uzbeks on our streets. Peaceful, calm, law-abiding migrants who simply work receive a “white” salary, for which the employer pays contributions to the pension fund and to insurance companies ...
- Viktor Kuzovkov
- novostipmr.com
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