Russia, which is experiencing a population decline, reduced the number of foreigners allowed to work in outdoor clothes and food markets to 40% of the overall workforce from January 15. Beginning April 1, 2007, they will be barred entirely, a move designed to bring order to the sector and curb a wave of ethnically motivated crimes in the country.
"This size of the quota is necessary to legalize all Tajik migrant workers currently working on Russian territory because up to 800,000 Tajik citizens work in various Russian regions during the peak season [March-December]," Tajikistan's labor minister, Shukurdzhon Zukhurov, said.
Some experts say Russia's restrictions are discriminatory. They could affect relations with members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) - a union of 12 ex-Soviet republics, which provide Russia with most of its foreign labor force, - prompt more race-hate attacks, and lead to price hikes.
The Tajik labor minister also said at least 80% of Tajik migrant workers lived and worked in Russia illegally, without registering with the authorities, and received meager wages. Employers often violated their rights, he said, adding that hopefully the situation would change for the better.
"Our main task now is to regulate migration to Russia to provide workers to those Russian regions where they are most needed," he said.
The Russian migration service has said that the funds Tajik migrant workers wire home from Russia are twice the size of the Central Asian country's budget.
Tajikistan's migration service said 43% of the overall Tajik migrant workforce is employed in Russia's construction sector, 11.6% in agriculture, 34.4% in trade and services, 8.4% in public catering, 1.5% in transportation, and 1.2% in healthcare and education.
The Tajik Interior Ministry said Russia deported about 7,000 Tajik migrant workers in 2006. Earlier this month, the Tajik government asked Russian authorities to grant amnesty to 50,000 Tajik citizens who had been expelled from Russia in the past three years.
Authorities in Russia have also moved to streamline registration procedures for guest workers, the main labor force in many industries, primarily the booming construction sector, but limited the number of job permits issued annually to 6 million.
Russia's Federal Migration Service said last year that over 20 million people come to Russia every year as part of a post-Soviet "migration boom," and that half of those are in the country illegally.
