Russian parliamentarians propose to establish a legislative norm according to which every foreign employee will be obliged to deposit money in a special account in the amount of the cost of return air tickets to their homeland before entering Russia.

According to the “Parlamentskaya gazeta”, Senator Vadim Dengin, one of the authors of the initiative, believes that in this way the budget of the Russian Federation will be relieved of the costs of sending migrant violators and those foreigners who have completed a labor patent or a contract to work in Russia to their countries of residence.

We are talking about a "security amount" that must be deposited into a special account in advance, before a person who wants to work in the Russian Federation enters Russia.

"Now my colleagues and senators are working on such an initiative. The amount that should be on the special account of a migrant coming to us is the cost of an air ticket, which will be required if a foreigner returns to his country due to the expiration of a labor patent or contract, as well as when a migrant is expelled from Russia for illegal acts," said Dengin.

He noted that such a mechanism would allow sending foreign workers from Russia to their homes without spending the budget of the Russian Federation. At the same time, according to the senator, the new amendments plan to provide that such a "security amount" can be made not only by the foreign employee himself, but also by the state from where he comes.

"We often have a situation where a migrant who has to leave Russia says that he has no money. And he is being expelled at the expense of the budget of the Russian Federation, at the expense of Russian taxpayers. This is wrong – Russia should not pay for the way home for such people.

We will try to work out this initiative in order to submit it to the State Duma by the end of the year, having previously agreed it in the Russian government," told Vadim Dengin the “Parlamentskaya gazeta”.

The issue of a mandatory security deposit for migrants has been discussed for more than ten years – for the first time such changes to the legislation of the Russian Federation were proposed by deputies of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg. Only then, in September 2013, it was a question of obliging foreign citizens entering Russia without a visa to have with them on the date of entry funds in the amount of at least six times the subsistence minimum.

The "portrait" of a migrant

The Federation Council is confident that migrants should come to our country, providing employment only for those jobs that are not occupied by Russians. Senator Dengin doubted that, for example, a citizen of the Russian Federation would not want to work as a commodity expert with a salary of 80 thousand rubles or in other places with a decent salary.

Dengin is sure that a "full portrait" must be drawn up for a foreigner who wants to work in Russia beforehand – the migration state structures of the Russian Federation must have sufficient information about where he lives in his country, where his family lives there, what educational documents he has, certificates of his professional qualifications, and also certificates about his health status in order to avoid the spread of serious infectious diseases in Russia.

He also noted that the initiative proposed earlier by lawmakers from the Liberal Democratic Party to ban the transportation of migrant families to our country, despite the criticism to which this proposal was subjected, "has the right to life, as it sets clear rules of the game" in the relationship between the Russian state and foreign workers.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, as of August this year, there are about 6.5 million migrant workers in Russia. According to unofficial data, there may be three times as many.