The Dear Migrants
The issue of migrant laborer legalization is even more acute in the West and in the United States than in Russia. In real terms, migrants are expected to fuel global revenues by 0.6 percent ($365 billion) by 2025, according to the World Bank.
Legalization of migrant laborers will annually provide 22.7 billion rubles ($0.8 billion) to the country’s budget, the RF Federal Migration Service forecasted far back in the fall of 2005. Even though no big surveys have been carried out for this problem in Russia, it is possible to give out some figures.
An average migrant laborer earns roughly $180 each month and Russia has around 5 million migrant workers now. Of them, about 90 percent work with no permit obtained. So, an average migrant can pay around $280 per year in income tax. As to the cost of social benefits that a migrant in the United States may count on for instance, they are minimal here.
In Russia, the migrants don’t pay taxes not only because they have no permit for work. With a sizeable part of the country’s economy in twilight, an employer, whose ultimate target is trimming the costs, is usually interested in no legalization for the migrant laborers. But facilitating legalization procedures will prompt some migrants to step out of the shade and at least a portion of the amount paid to enforcement bodies will ultimately go to the budget.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 01, 2006
|
