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- Advance payment: hundreds of thousands of migrants may be exempt from the Russian exam
Advance payment: hundreds of thousands of migrants may be exempt from the Russian exam
In Russia, it is planned to significantly increase the proportion of migrants who will not need to take exams in the Russian language, history and the basics of legislation to work in the country. The Cabinet of Ministers approved a draft law developed by the Ministry of Education and Science, according to which foreigners entering the Russian Federation under a government quota will be exempt from the obligation to confirm this knowledge. It is determined annually depending on the needs of employers. Currently, the law contains only exceptions in the form of highly qualified specialists, as well as journalists whose publications work with foreign languages. Now this exclusion will also apply to unskilled workers. The experts interviewed welcomed this decision as reducing the bureaucratic burden on employers, saving the country's resources for conducting exams and helping to close the need for personnel.
Who doesn't need to take exams
A new category of migrants who will not have to take exams on knowledge of the Russian language, history and the basics of legislation of the Russian Federation is planned to be fixed in the law on the legal status of foreigners in Russia. Currently, it states that obtaining such certificates is not necessary for highly qualified specialists who are attracted to the country by an employer with appropriate permission, as well as journalists working in media outlets established to disseminate mass information in foreign languages.
According to the amendments developed by the Ministry of Education and Science, it is planned to add to the law those foreigners who work in Russia on the basis of work permits according to the quota set by the government. Such a bill has already been approved by the Cabinet of Ministers, sources told Izvestia.
Thus, we can talk about almost 235 thousand foreign citizens — this figure appears in the latest government decree on the formation of quotas for 2025. This number is one and a half times higher than in 2024 (it is formed based on applications from employers).
"Such a quota is necessary to meet Russia's need to attract foreign workers arriving on the basis of a visa," Vladimir Gruzdev, Chairman of the Board of the Russian Bar Association, explained to Izvestia. — The draft law provides for a kind of simplified procedure for attracting foreign workers according to quotas formed by the government and corresponding to the specific needs of the economy and the labor market in Russia.
In particular, this year it was planned to attract to Russia (according to the list of priority professional qualification groups) more than 74 thousand skilled workers of large and small industrial enterprises, more than 43 thousand workers employed in mining, capital mining, construction, installation and construction works, more than 23 thousand workers of the metalworking and machine-building industries..
In addition, the government decree states that the country needs more than 5,000 qualified foreign workers in agricultural production, forestry and hunting, fish farming and fisheries, as well as about 5.5 thousand specialists in the field of natural sciences and engineering. The lowest quota is for foreign specialists in the field of biological, agricultural and engineering sciences - only 157 places. And more than 14.6 thousand people are "unskilled workers common to all sectors of the economy."
The explanatory note to the draft law notes that mostly foreign quota workers arrive in Russia from China, India, Turkmenistan and Turkey. However, it may not be fully exhausted in a year. So, in 2024, its size was almost 156 thousand seats, but it was used only by 65% (more than 86 thousand people entered it).
The proposed measure "will reduce the time spent on attracting the necessary human resources at the expense of foreign citizens, and more effectively meet the needs of the Russian economy, including as part of the implementation of major investment projects," the explanatory note to the bill says.
Why is there a new category?
Documents for obtaining a permit for hiring a foreign citizen are submitted to the territorial migration department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. And now, in addition to the exceptions outlined in the law, all foreigners entering Russia on a work visa must provide a document confirming their knowledge of the Russian language, history and the basics of the country's legislation — within 30 days. Otherwise, the work permit will be revoked.
The draft law of the Ministry of Education and Science suggests its increase to 90 days.
— The draft federal law is primarily aimed at strengthening government control in the field of labor migration and implies not only easing the deadline for submitting documents confirming proficiency in the Russian language, knowledge of the history and fundamentals of legislation of the Russian Federation, but also including the Ministry of Education and Science in the process of confirming such knowledge, — said Vladimir Gruzdev.
Thus, the Ministry of Education and Science is included in the list of bodies that interact with others "in order to confirm the availability of information about issued certificates."
According to current legislation, foreign citizens who have arrived in the Russian Federation to work under a quota are not exempt from presenting a certificate of proficiency in the Russian language, Anna Minushkina, chairman of the Minushkina and Partners Bar Association, explained to Izvestia.
— If changes are made and the legislation establishes that there is no obligation for foreign citizens who arrived in the Russian Federation within the quota to take the Russian language proficiency test and, as a result, provide the appropriate certificate to the Interior Ministry. This will make the hiring process easier," she said.
In 2024, the requirements for institutions that have the right to take exams from foreign citizens were changed — now only state institutions have it.
— And after the innovations, the following practice developed: employers sent petitions to the Interior Ministry for an extension of the 30-day period for sending a certificate of knowledge of the Russian language to the Interior Ministry, — said Anna Minushkina.
As experts interviewed by Izvestia noted, workers entering under a quota do not actually need knowledge of the Russian language — they come to solve specific tasks and do not plan to assimilate into society.
—It's the right decision to fix the exemption from testing knowledge of this category in the law," says Nina Vishnevskaya, director of the HSE Center for Labor Relations. — Conducting exams is expensive and impractical, and it is a special bureaucratic burden for the employer.
Chinese citizens, for example, come to Russia for the construction of gas pipelines, Turkish citizens for domestic infrastructure projects, said Alexander Safonov, vice—rector of the Financial University.
"They often come with their own management, with their own equipment, do work on site, which does not require language skills, and leave when they have handed over the facility," he said. — And now we are talking about the same tasks: if employees are involved in agricultural work, then why do they need language skills? Moreover, such labor migration is an established foreign practice.
Lyudmila Ivanova-Shvets, Associate Professor of the basic Department of Human Capital Development at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, noted that the appearance in the law of not only exceptions in the form of highly qualified specialists, but also its expansion for all those who come under a quota, will avoid ambivalent interpretations.
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