Moscow-based business daily Vedomosti has reported that as many as 50,000 labor migrants living in Russia, many of them from Central Asia, may end up losing their legal residency status this year because of personal debts.
In its August 2 report, the business daily cited an Uzbek diaspora activist as estimating that the number of people ending up as undocumented migrants expand by 100,000 by 2024.
Under Russian law, foreign nationals are required to leave the country after the period of legal residence has expired. As Vedomosti’s sources have noted, however, those same foreigners are increasingly being slapped with exit bans by bailiffs looking to recover outstanding debts.
That predicament in essence forces those people to remain in Russia without authorization.
Asylbek Egemberdiyev, a labor migration expert interviewed by Vedomosti, said that every flight to members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a post-Soviet grouping, sees between two to five people denied permission to leave the country. Those people are instructed to contact bailiffs to resolve their debt, the expert said.
The debt recovery claims appear to be coming in the main from microfinance institutions. The lenders have filed around 300,000 lawsuits in Russian courts between March and July seeking the recovery of loans issued to migrant laborers.
Average outstanding debts are around 70,000 to 80,000 rubles ($750-860 at official rates). That implies an overall debt pile of around one quarter of a billion dollars.
Source : Eurasia