More than 180 migrant workers from Uzbekistan are waiting out the Russian winter in cardboard shacks, hoping to finally receive payment for farm work performed last year, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported
The group is located in Volgograd Region, where the temperatures have dropped to -20 degrees Celsius.
A criminal case has been opened against the directors of two agricultural firms that owe the migrants about 6.2 million rubles ($200,000). According to prosecutors, the directors face up to seven years behind bars.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proposed on Thursday an array of robust measures, including stiff laws, to deal with illegal migration ahead of the March 4 presidential election.
He has called for the expulsion of illegals and a five- to ten-year ban on their re-entry into Russia, as well as prosecution of firms that employ illegal migrants and those who provide illegals with registration services and accommodation..
Current administrative penalties for those violations are “purely symbolic” and therefore ineffective, Putin said.
“The migration service is powerless here,” he said, adding that criminal penalties were needed.
Punitive measures, however, should be backed up by a new-look migration policy, Putin said.
“Russia is not going to shut itself off, isolate itself from anybody, but what we definitely need is to set higher standards on the quality of migration policy, including the regulation of labor migration,” he said.
Putin’s move seems to play up to nationalist sentiments and the huge public discontent among Russians who feel the country is being “overrun” by people from other former Soviet republics.
