2.5 The Quota System

The final major change in the 2007 legislation was the expansion of the quota system for work permits to include workers entering under the non-visa regime. Since 2003, only foreign workers entering Russia on a visa had been subject to quotas. The 2007 law also authorized the government to establish quotas in specific sectors, for specific regions, and for certain countries of origin.[65] Although international law does not specifically address quotas, experts concur that quotas should be founded on sound economic and employment data, and should not negate the important progress towards increasing legal employment of migrant workers. Overly restrictive policies result in quotas that are filled well before the end of the year, complicating planning for both employers and workers, and rendering migrants more vulnerable because they are not able to obtain the necessary documents to work legally. 

In the first year of the new laws' implementation, the FMS established a generous quota of six million work permits for workers entering under the non-visa regime in 2007. [66] For 2008, the authority to establish work permit quotas was transferred to the governments of Russia's 89 provinces, with the total number of work permits for the Russian Federation being aggregated from the provincial governments. [67] Under the revised system, the quota for work permits in 2008 was reduced by more than two-thirds to just over 1.8 million, including just over 1.1 million for workers entering Russia without a visa, with a 30 percent reserve. [68] The quotas established for 2008 were filled in numerous regions, including Moscow, within a few months. [69] The government issued an adjustment to the 2008 quotas, increasing the total number to over 3.38 million, including 2.24 million for those entering under the non-visa regime. [70]

Work permits are issued to any migrant worker who applies, on a first-come first-serve basis. Employers whose applications indicating their intention to hire foreign workers in the next year have been approved are not guaranteed that workers whom they want to hire will receive a work permit if the quota in their province has already been filled by the time the worker applies.

Impact of the Quota System on Migrant Workers

Human Rights Watch interviewed numerous migrant workers who had been unable to obtain work permits due to filled quotas in 2008, but nevertheless sought work, were hired, and began to work illegally. The unpredictability of quota system contributes to the barriers migrant workers face in obtaining the legal documents necessary for regular employment in Russia. This in turn compounds their vulnerability to abuse, as they fear fines or deportation should they seek redress from official sources. As noted above, workers who are not able to easily regularize their status may be more vulnerable to abuse and fearing fines or deportation owing to their irregular work status, and are less willing to seek redress from government agencies in the event of abuse. In Sverdlovsk Oblast, an industrial region in western Siberia and one of the regions receiving the highest number of migrant workers, the 2008 quota was set at 47,500, or less than half of the quota that had been established in 2007. The number proved to be too small, and the quota had been filled by early May. The local FMS office was forced to stop accepting new applications for work permits until the authorities in Moscow took a decision to revise the quotas.

A 53-year-old pediatrician from Tajikistan interviewed by Human Rights Watch had come to Ekaterinburg to work in a hospital. However, when he applied for a work permit in mid-May, the Ekaterinburg FMS did not accept his application. He was forced to work illegally at a construction site in order to earn money to live on while he waited for his work permit. "I went to apply for a work permit, and there were no more left. … Now I am waiting. I have a job at the hospital waiting for me. We have already agreed about it. I really hope I can get this job. For now I am helping at this cottage [construction site]." [71]   

The expiration of the quotas also affected migrant workers already employed in Russia, whose contracts and work permits were expiring just as the quotas ran out. A brigadier building cottages on the outskirts of Ekaterinburg oversaw a team of five workers who had been working for almost a year. He told Human Rights Watch, "My workers all had valid work permits, but their work permits expired on May 25. Now, the FMS is not taking new applications for work permits. We don't know what to do." The brigadier presumed that his men would keep working, despite frequent inspections by police and migration service authorities at the construction site. [72]