DUSHANBE, December 11, Asia-Plus  -- The CIS migration concept, endorsed by CIS experts in Minsk in early December, is aimed at regulating labor migration processes and countering illegal migration, Ramazan Rahimov, the head of the migration service of the Ministry of Interior (MoI), said in an interview with Asia-Plus.  

According to him, the draft document was elaborated by the Tajik government. Expert group consisting of representatives from president’s office, migration service and researchers had been engaged in elaboration of the draft document, Rahimov said.

“The main objective of the document is creating favorable conditions for labor migration, protection of rights of labor migrants against any forms of violence, threats, intimidation and discrimination,” the migration service chief said.  

            Besides, the document requires elaboration of new methods and directions of cooperation in the filed of labor migration and provides for improvement of legal foundation regulating issues related to labor migration process countering illegal migration  and ensuring social guarantees and economic rights of labor migrants, etc.  

Rahimov added that mechanism of implementation of the concept had already been elaborated.  One of such mechanisms envisages implementation of medium-term and long-term programs based on forecasting potential migration for the purpose of preventing spontaneous and unregulated processes of labor migration.   

On the present state of Tajik labor migrants in the Russian Federation, Rahimov said that a number of legal labor migrants had considerably increased after adoption by Russia of new migration legislation.  “In 2006, Russia’s Federal Migration Service officially registered some 30,000 Tajik labor migrants, while this year, the number of officially registered Tajik labor migrants has reached 200,000.” 

In the meantime, more than 1,850 Tajik labor migrants have been deported from Russian this year, Rahimov said.  Most of them were deported for failing to register within three days of their arrival in Russia.

We will recall that a meeting of the council for social policy at the Integration Committee of the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC) that was held in Dushanbe last month adopted a new common policy on migration policy.  An agreement includes important new initiatives, such as providing medical insurance fro migrants and social protection for their family members.  The agreement was approved by all the EAEC member nations except for Uzbekistan.