How can migration benefit state?

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) marked the 60th anniversary of its work worldwide and its 15th anniversary in Ukraine. In Kyiv, the event was commemorated with a debate on the peculiarities of domestic migration processes and the ways of improvement of the migrants’ conditions abroad, as well as of the conditions of immigrants in Ukraine.

The latest IOM data show that 6.5 million Ukrainian emigrants are currently living abroad. They are former Ukrainian citizens who, according to foreign census data, reside in those respective countries, the most popular being Russia, Germany, the US, Israel, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. On the other hand, the IOM data reveal that 5.3 million immigrants are living in Ukraine, with 85 percent of them being the nationals of Russia, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Georgia, etc.

Concerning our most economically active part of our po-pulation, guest workers, the data provided by the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy of Ukraine testify that there are 1.5 to 2 million of them working abroad. As far as five to seven million goes (the number sometimes given by certain NGOs), deputy minister of labor and social policy Vasyl Nadraha calls it “emotional.”

Experts emphasize that migration, including its labor variety, is a normal phenomenon worldwide, and the more open the society, the more migration there is. Another thing is that each state should conduct a policy which would enable it to benefit from the most recent tendencies and help its citizens abroad.

“Over these 20 years Ukraine has changed a lot. Back then, we were an immobile, closed society. Now Ukrainians both migrate and receive immigrants from other countries. The mission of state is to talk about future, about what migration has in stock for Ukraine, what are its opportunities and challenges, and how we can manage these processes. For instance, the money orders Ukrainians have sent from abroad to their homeland, eight times exceed the total fo-reign aid for development. It’s strange that no one should have paid attention to this cash flow, namely, how it can be used for the development of the country,” said chief of the IOM mission in Ukraine Manfred Profazi. “We concede that Ukraine’s economy would lose some 7 percent of its potential without the gastarbeiters’ cash incentives. Meanwhile, the growth of remittances by 10 percent would move 3.5 percent of residents above poverty threshold, and the reduction of remittance costs would promote total cash flow in money orders by 14-23 percent.”

According to Profazi, migration in Ukraine unfolds against the background of a grave problem, urgent for all Europe, the baby bust. And if Ukrainian labor migrants stay abroad, the crisis in economically active population will lead to the need to draw foreign migrants to Ukraine. Unfortunately, most economic migrants arriving from Asia and Africa also remain “in the shadow,” and no one is able to exactly assess their numbers. Yet Profazi is convinced of one thing: that Ukrainians abroad outnumber them by a great margin.

Geographically, Ukrainian gastarbeiters are spread abroad as follows: a half (out of 1.5-2 million) work in Russia, and the other half in Europe (Poland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Israel, Germany, and other countries); half are legalized, the other half are not. A total of 67 percent of labor migrants are men (they account for the construction workers in Russia). Most gastarbeiters come from Transcarpathia and Chernivtsi oblast (a “very high” level, according to the IOM), the rest, including Cherkasy oblast and western Ukraine (with the exception of Rivne oblast), are regions with a “high” level of migration, whereas Vinnytsia, Rivne, Mykolaiv and Luhansk are regions with a “medium” le-vel of migration. The remaining regions of our country have “low” and “very low” levels of migration (Kyiv is rated as “very low,” too).

In May this year, Viktor Yanukovych signed a Degree “On the Concept of State Migration Policy,” which includes a thesis on adaptation of gastarbeiters who come back from abroad, so they could stay home and work for domestic economy.

“At present, we cannot observe anything like coming back en masse, but the Ministry of Labor, via training centers under the State Employment Center, offers opportunities to get education and training which will enable Ukrainian migrants to work at home. As far as prospective business owners are concerned, at present we are working on the simplification of business launching and running procedures. We believe it to be a constituent which will help us solve the problem of bringing gastarbeiters back. It would be quite reasonable to create a favorable climate for running business in Ukraine,” said Nadraha.

Concerning the protection of labor migrants abroad, Nad-raha informed The Day that Ukraine is party to 13 international agreements on employment and 7 on social benefits (with Italy, Spain, Portugal and others). Similar documents with Israel, Germany, Greece, and Poland are being prepared for signing at present.

Andrii Olefirov, director, Department of Consular Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, broke good news for Ukrainian gastarbeiters. He told that starting on January 1, 2012, Ukrainians residing abroad temporarily or constantly will be able to get their international passports at consular departments (the previous legislation on the issuing of passports did not contain the attribute “temporary”). Which means that labor migrants will not have to come back to Ukraine when their passports expire.