Baby boom: Immigrants raise Moscow’s birth rate
One in ten children born in Moscow is to an immigrant family, the Russian Stats Agency says.
This marks the first time in 20 years that the birth rate in the Russian capital exceeded the mortality rate. Around 9.6 per cent of those children come from immigrant families.
The Social Policy Department believes immigration is the only way to keep Russia’s modernization on course. Officials believe that by 2025, the workforce will decrease by around 10 million people.
The only way out is to attract more high-qualified immigrants able to participate in the country’s modernization process, especially in big infrastructure projects, as well as in the oil, transportation and engineering industries.
Meanwhile, social specialists say that unless working conditions for immigrants are improved, the situation is unlikely to change for the better.
“What we'll have in the future depends on the government policies of today,” Yulia Florinskaya, demographer at the Higher School of Economics, told RT. “Right now there's no investment into migrant integration, they are not provided with any support, benefit systems, they don't have access to health services. If you help them integrate, it reduces the level of tension that one often finds present in multi-cultural societies.”
The Russian Stats Agency says the flow of immigrants has actually gone down 47 per cent.
Sociologists, however, say that the flow is fed by illegal immigration – there are at least 10 “grey” migrants for every legal one. The actual number is estimated at one million – one fourth of all foreigners who come to Russia.
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