Last Friday, Governor of the Kaluga Region Vladislav Shapsha announced the region's withdrawal from the resettlement program for compatriots living abroad.
He also announced the introduction of a ban on attracting guest workers to work in the field of catering, transport and retail trade.
According to Shapsha, hiring on the basis of work patents issued to migrants will be significantly limited in the region, and foreigners will be put under special control when passing exams for knowledge of the Russian language.
At the same time, the governor posted on his Instagram account a video of an unscheduled visit to the migration center in the Borovsky district, during which he tried in vain to find at least one Russian speaker among the guest workers receiving labor patents.
However, the main reason for tightening the migration policy was not an unscheduled inspection, but numerous scandals with guest workers that have been shaking the region for several months now.
So, on October 1, 2021, in the city of Balabanovo, Kaluga Region, three migrants from Central Asia decided to warm themselves by the “bonfire”, which for some reason was burning in the central square.
A local schoolgirl, who tried to explain that it was the Eternal Flame, was sent obscene.
On December 16, 2021, in Yermolino, another city in the Kaluga Region, a local teenager was stabbed as a result of a conflict with guest workers.
In January 2022, a new scandal in the Kaluga region - now in Obninsk.
The parents of a 4th grade student complained of sexual harassment by three sons of visitors.
As local publics then described, school hooligans "clamped and pawed in a group."
After the latest scandal, Telegram channels and social networks began to call Obninsk “captured by migrants”: allegedly, visitors from southern countries already make up about 30% of the population.
Although four years ago the Kaluga region was even called the "gateway to Russia."
RT tried to figure out how and why the "gates for migrants were closed" in the Kaluga region.
No language and seven people in a room
In the 21st century, having no oil or gold deposits, the Kaluga region unexpectedly broke into the leaders of economic growth.
The term "Kaluga economic miracle" appeared.
Proximity to the capital, coupled with not the busiest Kiev highway and regular electric trains of the Kiev railway, made the region attractive for both residents and employers.
Investors came to the region - Volkswagen, Samsung, Nestle, etc. factories opened.
Simultaneously, a housing boom began.
At the same time, the majority preferred to live and produce closer to Moscow - the main production clusters appeared near Obninsk, and not Kaluga.
Both immigrants from more remote regions of Russia and guest workers rushed to the city itself.
That is why the concentration of migrants in Obninsk is higher.
Artyom Mainas
RT
“We’re going to hostels on Marx Avenue and Engels Street — that’s where the front of contact between peoples and cultures is right,” local public figure Artyom Mainas gives us a tour of Obninsk.
Once upon a time there were family-type hostels here.
On the floor there are 18 rooms of 11 sq.
m. The kitchen and amenities are in the common corridor.
Today it is already permanent housing - the rooms are sold to those who can only afford such real estate.
The cost of the room is about 1 million rubles.
Most owners rent these rooms.
Now, if there is a place to shoot the interiors of the ghetto, then in these five-story buildings.
Dirty, gloomy.
RT
All the walls from the entrance to the house to the attic are densely covered with various ornate obscenities.
“Six months ago, only Russians lived on my floor,” says Olga Yaroslavtseva, one of the native inhabitants of the hostel.
- And now, apart from me, there are only two rooms left.
The rest are guests from Central Asia.”
According to Olga, several people now live in each room.
RT
We decided to walk around the neighbors, but found only a few at home - despite Saturday, almost everyone is working somewhere.
One door was opened by a young woman.
He doesn't speak Russian at all.
Unless she was able to give her name and the name of her one and a half year old daughter.
She is from Uzbekistan.
A young guy opened in another room.
He was already more or less able to explain himself - at least he understood the questions being asked.
Also from Uzbekistan.
Came without family.
He works at the Samsung factory as an assembly line assembler.
According to Olga, seven people live in his room.
Almost all the migrants we met spoke Russian very poorly.
RT
Olga says that life has become scary.
Describes conflicts with the aggressive Central Asian youth who settled on the floor above.
Cut threats.
Shows the door to the floor with a broken lock - the consequences of a drunken brawl of guests from Muslim countries.
Her Slavic neighbors talk about periodic fights right in front of the entrance.
However, it is clearly not only guest workers who are hooligans here - the walls are by no means covered in Uzbek or Tajik.
RT
From the window of the hostel on the nearby Engels Street, children are waving through the window.
We rise.
The father of the family is at work.
Mother with children at home.
Four.
He speaks excellent Russian.
And the kids are talking.
From Tajikistan.
We came here to stay forever.
So far, they are applying for a temporary residence permit (TRP), and after the due date they will apply for citizenship.
RT
As soon as we left, a message came from Artyom Mainas: police raid on Marx, 52.
By the time we got back, the police had already filled the whole bus with detainees.
Through the window, our operator saw the guy from Samsung.
As later explained in the administration of Obninsk, it was a planned event.
53 foreigners were detained.
32 of them turned out to be violators of immigration laws and will be deported.
Five turned out to have fake registrations at the place of stay.
And we are already citizens!
The main public transport in Obninsk is minibuses.
We are going to the parking lot of minibuses at the station square to find out what drivers will do when the governor's ban on working in public transport comes into force.
RT
“And I am a citizen of Russia,” laughed the first driver with a pronounced Central Asian appearance.
“It's been ten years already.
My children have already grown up - my son is studying at the university in Moscow.
According to him, almost all of his colleagues on the square, although they come from Central Asia, are no longer migrants, but Russians.
We didn't believe.
“He is right,” Vyacheslav Narukov, president of the Obninsk Chamber of Commerce and Industry, confirmed.
“Migrants make up only 3% of those employed in urban transport.”
Vyacheslav Narukov
RT
Together with Narukov, we are going to see the new quarters of the city, populated and under construction.
Construction sites are the most guest workers places.
We go to the first construction site we met.
A man of Slavic appearance comes out of the change house, introduces himself as Vasily.
“Probably you are a foreman or a foreman,” I ask him.
“No, I'm an installer,” Vasily waves his hand.
It turned out that it was at this facility that all the workers from the Bryansk region.
Coincidence, of course.
Showing us the Obninsk industrial cluster, which includes a large pharmaceutical production, a call center of a well-known bank, and much more, Narukov notices that quite qualified personnel are employed here - there are no migrants.
If we talk specifically about the enterprises of Obninsk, then in addition to construction sites, migrants are employed in food production.
And mostly guest workers living in Obninsk go to work in the neighboring Borovsky district: in Ermolino, Balabanovo, Vorsino.
They don't know our culture
It is said that against the backdrop of recent scandals, raids and other “conversations with the leaders of the diaspora”, migrants are trying to be quiet and not appear on the streets once again.
“And this is what usually happens here!
Both here and in Balabanovo,” an elderly woman in Yermolino told me.
Indeed, the village is quiet.
Pensioners are walking in front of the local house of culture.
One of them turns out to be the uncle of a guy cut last year.
“Yes, they were Uzbeks,” he confirms.
- No, not the same age - noticeably older.
Immediately, a discussion begins about “why even let them in at all”.
“You know,” the uncle of the cut man unexpectedly gives out.
“They still work.
They inject.
Not like ours…”
RT
We are going to neighboring Balabanovo.
Here, on Friday evenings, Saturdays and Sundays, the streets are patrolled by vigilantes.
No, these are not "self-defense units" - the usual Voluntary People's Druzhina (DND), which migrated from Soviet times.
I have never seen people in vests and bandages in Moscow.
And here they really do.
Together with the commander of the DND Balabanovo Alexander Isaykov and two more warriors, we get from the registry office to the square with the Eternal Flame.
The fire itself is already even fenced off, so it was inconvenient to come close.
Alexander Isaikov
RT
According to Isaikov, the problem is that young people who come from Central Asia to work are not at all familiar with our culture.
Many simply do not know what the Eternal Flame is.
And cases when they “warm themselves by the fire” occur periodically.
For others, from the seeming permissiveness compared to their homeland, it literally rips off the roof.
They drink alcohol on the street.
They fight each other.
“There was a mass brawl right on this square near the Eternal Flame,” they tell me.
In Balabanovo, they notice that, despite the presence of industries near their homes, many local residents go to work in Moscow.
This is also due to migrants.
“They agree to work not eight, but twelve hours a day for the same money,” the locals explain.
Time to calculate the efficiency
As the mayor of Obninsk Tatyana Leonova told RT, about 120 thousand people live in the city today.
And together with Borovsk, Balabanovo, Ermolino and others, which form the so-called Northern agglomeration, there are about 300 thousand.
Only 15,000 foreigners are registered for this entire agglomeration.
Even if the lion's share of them prefer to live in Obninsk, this is still far from being voiced in the media 30%.
Tatyana Leonova
RT
In total, in the Kaluga region, according to the governor Vladislav Shapsha, there are about 50 thousand foreigners for almost 1 million inhabitants.
That is, 5%.
The ratio is comparable to Moscow and St. Petersburg, but not critical.
It’s another matter if we add here those who received citizenship in recent years, with or without a passport, but in the eyes of the local population they are still migrants.
And with them, the alignment may turn out to be different.
“More than 15.5 thousand children study in Obninsk,” Tatyana Volnistova, head of the city’s General Education Department, told RT.
2099 children with a non-native Russian language, of which 1322 children are citizens of the Russian Federation.
It turns out that more than 13% of children for whom Russian is not native.
Recently, the portrait of a guest worker has changed.
Previously, a man came and sent his salary to his wife and children.
Today, more and more people take their families with them.
The school notices this first.
Tatyana Volnistova
RT
According to Tatyana Volnistova, the influx of children of foreigners has grown significantly over the past four years.
According to Marina Akhmedova, a member of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, a significant proportion of those receiving child benefits in the Kaluga Region were new citizens.
In particular, in accordance with the law of the Kaluga region "On the monthly cash payment for the birth of a third child or subsequent children until the child reaches the age of 3 years", a monthly cash payment for the third child (and subsequent children) is established.
Its size is 11 thousand 550 rubles.
In 2021, it was paid to 795 families for 862 children.
Of these, 60% became citizens of the Russian Federation from 2019 to 2021.
The migration flow is growing.
At the same time, in the families of visitors from Central Asia, there are three or four children.
On the one hand, guest workers are working to boost the Russian economy.
But on the other hand, they create costs for administration and control.
They create a burden on the social sphere - the same free education of their children.
“Business sees income from guest workers, and the municipality sees only expenses,” Tatyana Leonova comments.
“And the foreign labor force is expensive for the municipality.
Nobody considered the resulting economic efficiency of attracting migrants.
Right now is the time to think and count.”
In the meantime, as Vladislav Shapsha told RT, the migration flow in the region will be reduced: the number of issued patents (work permits) will be brought into line with applications from enterprises.
That is, a patent for free employment will no longer be issued.
And literally as confirmation that the problem really exists: right before our departure for Moscow on Sunday, February 13, a mass fight of migrants again took place in Obninsk.
Right on Marx Avenue.