BBC Russian Service - Information Services. Illegal hostel for guest workers

On Thursday evening, I again had a chance to observe how difficult relations are between illegal migrants who have flooded the entire center of Moscow and local residents who are dissatisfied with their presence.

2. Activists and residents started from the basement of a house in M. Kozikhinsky Lane, 8. Countless Kyrgyz scurry about in the yard, clearly feeling safe here. We went down to the basement and saw the same gloomy picture. As usual, the whole room is filled with bunks and other furniture, dragged from the nearest dump. Not only adults live here, but also several children.

3. Seeing us, the Kirghiz fled to neighboring yards, but they managed to stop one and question us. The employee was confused in his testimony - at first he said that he had been living in this basement for the seventh year, and on camera he began to say that he had brought his family to Moscow to see, only at the same time it was necessary to live in the basement.

4. The light is on in the basement, there is also water, which is taken by connecting to common system water supply at home

5. One of the rooms in the basement of house number 8.

6. All cellars were sealed at first glance, but all of this is a fake.

7. Police officers soon arrived - a senior lieutenant and a senior sergeant, who were absolutely not interested in the fact that visitors without registration live on their territory, but in a boorish manner they demanded that their photos be deleted. Employees are on duty and can be photographed, so the requirement was illegal. The senior sergeant clearly did not know the law and even wanted to arrest me on an unknown basis, but we resolved the conflict amicably - the senior in rank politely asked to remove the photo. The policemen did not pay any attention to the Kyrgyz - one gets the impression that they already know what is happening in the nearby basements, but for some reason it is more profitable for them not to notice this.
And here is the office that manages these cellars.

8. We go down to the next basement of the same house.

9. A lot of wires are connected to the electrical panel - the residents of the house pay utility bills not only for themselves, but also for “those guys” who illegally occupy basements and use all the benefits of civilization for free.
Do you think a fire is possible in this basement?

10. Next came the district police officer Dmitry Alexandrovich Medvedev, who provided us with all kinds of assistance and acted strictly within the law. He forced the EZhNF workers to seal this basement and another one next door.

11. We find interesting documents.

12. The district police officer and the activists tried to find out why the janitors live in the basements if a special living space is allocated for them (which, of course, is successfully rented out for a lot of money). Representatives of the managing organization did not want to answer this question and switched to threats and insults.

13. With the help of the district police, activists and residents insist that the cellars be sealed.

14. All the time there is a local janitor nearby, who conducts covert surveillance and constantly calls up fellow countrymen and transmits information.

15.

16. Yards are simply teeming with illegal immigrants.

17. The next point of our tour was a three-story house on Tverskoy Boulevard, 17/3. On the first floor there is an office, the other two are occupied by illegal immigrants.

18. The room is relatively clean, there was a smell of homemade food. A young Kyrgyz woman, like her fellow policemen, proved to us from scratch that she should not be filmed and, like many of her fellow countrymen, pretended to have some kind of civil rights, and she doesn't even have a registration.

21. This settled house has electricity and gas.

22. Speaking of registration. Some labor migrants still have Russian passports, in which one of the remote Siberian cities is listed as the place of registration. Something tells me they've never been there. Visiting Asians know that documents can be easily bought at the Kazansky railway station, but where do they come from there? Fake or stolen?

23. A correspondent and operator of the Vesti channel arrived at the scene. According to the operator of Vesti, they have already traveled to this building more than once with FMS employees, but nothing has changed after their story - illegal immigrants lived there as they live.
One gets the impression that all official institutions know about the situation with illegal immigrants in this area, but turn a blind eye to it. It is useless to call the police after 02 - he simply does not respond to such calls, last time he had to wait for an order for about an hour and a half. Representatives of the Federal Migration Service, which should be the first to take action, did not arrive at all.
And I have a sign hanging on my front door.

Among the Kyrgyz, there was another curious person - a refugee from Grozny, who accused the Russians in general and me in particular, that we had destroyed her native city. Defending herself and illegal immigrants, she emphasized that Muscovites did not allow them to live in peace here, in the former estate of the Volkonskys, an architectural monument. They want to protect their rights, but at the same time they do not comply with Moscow and federal laws - what rights can we talk about?

in which Kyrgyz migrant workers live illegally.

2. We managed to get into one of them, and we saw a disappointing sight.
Judging by the number of shoes, at least 30 people live in the basement.

4. The whole space is crowded with beds and other utensils, everywhere is very dirty. There is no ventilation in the room, it is very stuffy, a favorable atmosphere is created for the reproduction of bacteria, which are already numerous here.

5. Many families live in the basement, there are also small children.

6. Kitchen.

7. In the basement there is a bath, a toilet, a washing machine is connected - the Kyrgyz use all communications, but they probably do not pay for these services - it turns out that the residents of house No. 22 pay for the light and water of illegal migrants.

9. They called the police through the service 02. They began to wait. The inhabitants of the basement could not get into their comfortable apartments and pretended to be tourists.

10. The police squad was delayed. An hour later they went to look for the district police officer.

11. The police officers arrived at the scene only after an hour and a half and after four calls, they admitted that they were powerless to do anything.

12. - Open, police! - but nobody opened it.

13. Not a single Kyrgyz has a registration, but the police have no right to touch them - migrants are under the care of the housing office.

14. The dispatcher of the ZhEKa feels impunity and refused to give the police officers the keys to the basement where the Kirghiz dormitory is located.

15. Roman Tkach. A resident of the house on M. Bronnaya. Pays bills for himself, his family and guests of the capital.

16. There are two such basements in the courtyard of the house on Malaya Bronnaya, in any of the neighboring courtyards the situation is no better, for example, another such hostel is located on Tverskoy Boulevard.

While posting...
Last night in Moscow, a strong fire was extinguished in the center of the city. The fire occurred in the attic of a settled two-story house of an old building on Povarskaya Street. Its area was 300 square meters. 16 fire brigades were on the scene. Two guest workers were rescued from the burning house. Investigators are now investigating how they got into the boarded-up house. In addition, 10 people were evacuated from a nearby five-story residential building. According to the preliminary version, the cause of the fire was careless handling of fire.

I met Ivan and Lily last winter. An ordinary young married couple who came from Moldova to Moscow to work. Actually, the reason for the acquaintance was the repair that they did in my apartment. They are 30 years old and have a daughter. Ivan is a stepfather, but he treats the girl like his own. Maybe because he himself is an orphan.

People who constantly do something at your house for several months become almost like relatives. In any case, they are not strangers. Day by day, word by word. In our kitchen, over a cup of tea, Lilya and Ivan talked about themselves.

Both come from a small Moldovan town. Life there is not sweet. Work is very bad. Of course, no one dies of hunger - after all, the climate is good, and you can eat from gardens. But living conditions are more than modest, and public Utilities- disproportionately expensive. Participation of the state in life ordinary people- purely nominal.

There is no central heating in apartment buildings, and not everyone can afford to pay electricity bills. It turns out that it has already become a normal practice when residents, in order not to overpay for electricity, chip off for gasification of the house. And if not everyone agrees, then the house can be partially gasified. My friends did just that and can use relatively inexpensive gas: for cooking, heating water, for heating.

Power supply is a separate story. Lilya admits that when they made repairs at home, they had to change the dilapidated wiring for a new one and lead it not just from the shield to the apartment, but separately to the house, then along the entrance, and so on. Well, Ivan is a jack of all trades, and this task was within his power.

Although Moldova has already signed an association agreement with the EU, life has not become sweeter.

Rapprochement with the EU is very peculiar here. For example, according to Ivan, you can bring a car from Europe and drive it without registering it in Moldova. Changing numbers is expensive, and people take advantage of the fact that state control is weak - they drive around their own country with some Polish numbers.

The guys said that it is customary to buy not only cars, but also consumer electronics there because of the proximity of the EU - it is significantly more expensive in local stores.

It is quite ordinary business, say, to order a TV with delivery. And it will be brought to you directly to the door of the apartment in a private minibus - such an impromptu minibus - from where you say, even from Berlin. There are shuttle entrepreneurs in Moldova who live by this.

I have heard many such stories. The couple talked about it with a smile, as if it were a matter of course, because they did not see another life. People simply try to solve this or that everyday problem, and, without losing heart, somehow adapt to unfriendly life circumstances.

Lilya and Ivan are kind, religious, touchingly patriarchal. Not finding the USSR at a conscious age, they speak of it with warmth and regret. From the stories of the older generation, they know that there was a large country in which there was free education and medical care (according to them, even today their relatives and friends prefer to be treated in Russia). It was possible to improve living conditions and rest for free. And people could earn a living where they were born and raised.
Only the Russian language remained as a memory of that time (Lilya speaks almost fluently, Ivan does not speak it very well) and the opportunity to come to work in the former capital of the Union. Having rented a corner in the not very near Moscow region, they found a job, they even managed to temporarily arrange a daughter in a kindergarten.

All this is not in order to move to Russia, no - they love their homeland - but in order to earn money. If possible, legally. But such an opportunity is still luck. Workers from Moldova are not particularly expected.

It turns out that for such loyal citizens from the CIS countries, with working hands and a bright head, Russia, as they say, "does not have an attractive project." There are no "buildings of the century" and industries where people like Ivan could work at full capacity.

In such a situation, even pro-Russian residents of Moldova look at Europe, get a job there and eventually pay taxes to some French treasury.

France is really very popular among the inhabitants of the post-Soviet republics. Only many people want to see Paris and stay there to live. This is what Ivan's brother did a few years ago. And in September 2016, Ivan himself moved there with Lilya and his daughter. Their photo with the Eiffel Tower in the background appeared as an avatar in the Internet messenger ...

It's not just about the lights of a big European city. And the fact that in Paris they still monitor compliance with permissible working conditions. Yes, and the pay for this work is higher.

Who knows, maybe we'll see each other again with Ivan and Lilya. Maybe again on repair matters - they are really good craftsmen - or maybe just for no reason they will come to visit us.

These wonderful people live with gratitude for the common past, and people like them, Russia is needed even today.

Read, watch, listen to Sputnik Moldova on mother tongue— download the mobile application for your smartphones and tablets.

Evening, outskirts of Moscow. I drive up to the address where the illegal hostel of guest workers should be located. I can’t find a house for a long time, then it turns out that I have already passed by the right house several times. A two-story abandoned building, all the windows are dark, I would never have thought that inside hundreds of people are preparing to celebrate the bright holiday of the new year "Navruz", according to the solar calendar.

01. Inside, all windows are sealed with black film or bricked up. No one should know that people live here.

02. About 500 people live in a small barrack. In some rooms they sleep in shifts. This illegal hostel is covered by one "enterprise", which provides the city with street cleaning services. The owner of this enterprise took the documents from the workers and agreed with the police to bypass the building. No one will ever complain here, if the hostel is closed, then 500 people will be on the street. Recently, due to a call from local residents, a neighboring hostel was closed, some of its residents moved here.

03. First impression is VERY dirty. Hordes of cockroaches crawl along the floor and walls, rats run. This does not prevent children from safely walking barefoot here. Cockroaches fall from the ceiling onto people, into food and on beds. No one here has been paying attention to them for a long time. All the black dots on the floor ARE COCKROACHES.

04. Fragment of a wall. All black dots are COCKROACHES. I have never seen so many insects in one place. It's more like some kind of TV show where the heroes have to go through disgusting tests in the fight for the main prize.

05. There are a lot of children. Many get sick, some die. Nobody provides any medical assistance. No one will call an ambulance here, this house is not on the map.

06. One of the rooms. There is almost no furniture. They sleep on the floor, taking turns. 10 men live in this small room, almost all of them are janitors. Festive table: bread, soda, apples and pilaf.

07. The most delicious pilaf is eaten with hands.

08. Festive dinner, roast. Guest workers can afford such a dinner several times a year.

09. Yum-yum!

10. A family of 7 lives in this room. They take turns sleeping. I don't understand why you can't keep the room clean. The stove has not been washed apparently for several years. What prevents me from washing the stove, floor, dishes, I don’t understand.

11.

12. The average salary of these people is 6,000 rubles. They don't officially exist. Relatives and friends of the leaders of the housing departments work in their places. Each such employee brings the owner up to 20,000 rubles a month. 500 employees 10,000,000 rubles per month and this is only one hostel.

13. Do not think that these people work hard. As the locals said, the hostel is always full of people.

14. Everyone has their own story of how they got to Moscow.
- A militia does not touch you?
- What you! The police are protecting us. The owner agreed with them, if there are any problems, we call them ourselves, they solve everything!

15.

16. Another room.

17. The conditions in which illegal janitors live are sometimes even worse and harder than their work. As it turned out, almost everywhere they live with their families and children in the basements of houses and buildings. “There are special dormitories for workers in every district of the city, but places in them are usually sold to traders from the markets. “Tajiks are sent to basements where they live, give birth and raise children, cook food, wash in basins and eat among pipes.” A place in the basement is also worth it: for a Russian - 400 rubles, for residents of the CIS - 500 rubles.

18.

19. 15 minutes after the start of filming, a drunk lady of Slavic appearance looked out of one room. Then another and another... In fact, the ladies turned out to be citizens of Belarus, they also live here. They work as cheap prostitutes. The ladies felt the danger and threats rained down on me. And then a whole camp gathered and had to leave.

It was these people who went to the Uzbekistan restaurant on Sunday.

Oriental-looking people cleaning the streets are a familiar part of the landscape in many major cities. Today Anews will try to take a closer look at the life of janitors and builders who have traveled thousands of kilometers in search of work and food for their families.

What conditions do they live in? How do they negotiate with the authorities? And how much do they earn?

Where do they live?

“The system is simple. One man, reputable in appearance, rents a two-room apartment in Moscow for 40,000 rubles. 30 people are settled there, they pay 3 thousand from each. While some work, others sleep on the floor.

This is how Rakhim, who came from Samarkand, describes his experience.

This is far from the worst option. Sometimes labor migrants have to huddle not in urban apartments, at least somewhat comfortable, but in illegal dormitories. These are abandoned buildings, the windows in which are tightly boarded up or sealed - so as not to show that people live there.

There is no need to talk about sanitary conditions in such premises. Blogger Ilya Varlamov describes his impressions of visiting such a place:

I have never seen so many insects in one place. It's more like some kind of TV show where the heroes have to go through disgusting tests in the fight for the main prize.

There are a lot of children. Many get sick, some die. Nobody provides any medical assistance. No one will call an ambulance here, this house is not on the map.”

However, this is not the most extreme option. Sometimes it happens that visitors do not get any room at all. In such situations, they have to solve problems on their own - for example, dig dugouts.

Law enforcement officers and the Federal Migration Service periodically discover such dwellings in the most unexpected places. A few years ago, a settlement of dugouts for about 50 people was found near the Moscow Ring Road and the tracks of the Kazan direction of the Moscow Railway.

“We were approached by a man who, while riding an electric train, saw from the window a mass gathering of visitors and smoke from fires,- said Roman Chermashentsev, inspector of the local department of the Federal Migration Service. - When we arrived there, we saw dozens of barracks dug into the ground, each of which can accommodate at least fifteen residents..

“They were not visible: around the settlement there were earthen ramparts, along the edge of which dry bushes and trees were piled added the police officers. - A real partisan disguise!”

Dmitry Poletaev, a leading researcher at the Institute of Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences, looks somewhat more positively at the problem. In an interview with Anews, he said that the living conditions of migrant workers are gradually starting to improve:

“It can be said that there has been a certain turning point in terms of housing. There is a kind of marker here: if earlier they lived, including in the kitchen, now this is a thing of the past.

We had a big study on domestic workers. Those of them who have been working with us for three or four years already stop living with the owners who provide such an opportunity in order to work less. Because if you live with the owner, then you work an average of three to four hours more a day. After all, you are always at hand.

If you, for example, are sitting with a child, why not ask you to also wash the floors, do some housework? Therefore, those who have experience are already trying to rent a room, not to live with the owners. As they gain experience, workers in other areas also begin to behave this way.

If a migrant has an appropriate attitude, if he travels often and for a long time, conditions gradually improve. Mass living in trailers, in basements - this is the outgoing nature ".

Bribes and fictitious marriages

Naturally, many aspects of the life of migrant workers in Russia cannot do without informal agreements with the authorities. In his article about illegal dormitories, Varlamov describes the following situation - the neighboring dormitory was closed due to appeals from local residents, but the migrants who found themselves on the street were not deported, but moved to the one that the blogger visited. When asked about relations with law enforcement officers, one of the residents said:

“The police are protecting us. The owner agreed with them, if there are any problems, we call them ourselves, they solve everything!”

One of the latest corruption scandals on this issue occurred in early spring - on March 22, the Moscow Garrison Military Court arrested the captain of the FSB department "M" Vladimir Bezrukov, the captain of the operational department of the FSB CIB Nikolai Komarov and the deputy head of the migration department of the Internal Affairs Directorate for the North-East Administrative District of Moscow, Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Vasiliev . They are charged with taking a bribe in the amount of 7,500,000 rubles for paperwork for migrants.

Another common problem in labor migration is fictitious marriages. This makes it easier to obtain a residence permit, citizenship and the right to work.

Offers like “Ready to enter into a business marriage with a man for one or two years. Only according to documents, without intimate relationships and cohabitation "there is a lot on the network. The price of the issue depends on the region. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, on average, you will have to pay 100,000 rubles (without a residence permit). In other large Russian cities, a "commercial" marriage costs from 50 to 70 thousand rubles. In small peripheral towns, the price drops to 10-15 thousand rubles, and in rural areas you can find a marriage partner for 5-7 thousand.

It's hard to deal with this. There is no criminal punishment for a fictitious marriage, and it is extremely difficult to prove its fictitiousness. In Russia, attempts are periodically made to increase responsibility and control, but not everyone agrees with such measures. Experts say that marriages with migrants are often concluded for love.

“It is extremely difficult for women over 35 to find a partner among Russians: men over 40 are 20% less than women,- recalls the psychologist Lyudmila Karpukhina. - In addition, migrant workers usually do not drink, bring home wages and are very hardworking. Against this background, religious and cultural differences fade into the background. Now every such couple has to prove that their marriage is real? Let a commission into the house for the night?

How much do migrants earn?

In July 2017, a large-scale study of this issue was conducted by the National Research University Higher School of Economics - high school economy. Interestingly, the income of both legal and illegal migrants was considered there.

The study showed that visitors from Belarus earn the most in Russia - an average of 41.1 thousand rubles a month. There are no illegal immigrants among them, since Russia and Belarus have a single Union State.

But the worst in Russia is the life of Tajiks (27.9 thousand rubles for legal guest workers and 25.1 thousand rubles for illegal ones), Uzbeks (29.0 and 27.2 thousand) and Kyrgyz (29.3 and 27.2 thousand) .

The study also says that the ratio of the average salary of migrants to the average salary of Russian citizens has grown quite noticeably since 2011 - from 72.8% to 84% (in 2011, migrants received an average of 17.7 thousand rubles, Russians - 24.3 thousand, in 2017 - 30.1 thousand and 35.8 thousand, respectively).