MOSCOW, May 21 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev believes that control should be established over migration and has promised to deal with the issue.
“Everyone who comes should abide by our rules, our laws, traditions, and they should learn the Russian language. Then the situation will be calm. It is necessary to take the process of migration under control,” the Cabinet head said in an interview to the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.
In his view, “the most important thing is to create a system that will make it possible to monitor these (migration) processes.” “The latest decisions are aimed at this. Including those regarding the need to use international passports, and not to travel with some certificates or shady documents. We need to understand who comes to us,” said Medvedev. In his view, “this is a sanitary-epidemiological, economic, as well as security problem.” “So we are going to do this,” the prime minister promised.
According to him, the theme of migration “is neither positive nor negative.” “It’s just our life. Firstly, we live in an open country when people come and go. Secondly, we live in a complex demographic situation where we need additional manpower. Russia in the coming years and decades will hardly be able to completely refuse form services of migrants. Because we already don’t want to work, for instance, as janitors,” Medvedev said. “A huge number of migrants come from Ukraine and Belarus. Their number on some days reaches millions. And, certainly, from the Central Asian states, mostly from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan,” Medvedev said.
However, he stressed that not only unskilled workers arrive in Russia. “Hundreds of thousands of people come from Germany, the Netherlands and Britain. They are not tourists coming to visit the Hermitage, but those who arrived on employment visas. This means that our country is attractive to people who have good earnings at home,” said the prime minister.