By April 30, a million foreigners working in Russia without work visas will have to get legal or go home. A new law signed by President Putin reflects economic and social stresses inside Russia. Worldwide, Russia ranks second only to America for its number of foreign-born workers.

Russia has 10 million foreign-born workers, of which about a million work without permits. The United States has 34 million foreign-born workers, of which about 14 million work without permits.

The Kremlin, like the Trump Administration, is caught between societal pressures to cut uncontrolled immigration and business pressures to ease a labor shortage. Mr. Putin faces a severe labor shortage, largely due to his war against Ukraine. One million men are in the army. One million more ducked the draft and fled the country. As a result, Russia’s unemployment rate is 2.3 percent — the lowest rate since communism collapsed 34 years ago.

Russian public opinion polls regularly reflect wide hostility to migrant workers.  Most migrants come north from Central Asia’s three poorest countries — Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. All former Soviet republics, these countries have visa-free permits for short term stays in Russia.  In a Levada Center poll in July, 61 percent of respondents called for barring or limiting Central Asian visitors.

Terror attacks tested ties. Last March, four men from Tajikistan were charged with carrying out a massacre at a Moscow concert hall. The attack left 145 dead, 551 injured and 95 missing. In December, an Uzbek migrant was arrested and charged with killing a Russian lieutenant general in Moscow.

In response to these attacks, Russia tightened controls on foreign workers. During the first half of last year, deportations jumped 53 percent to 93,000. An additional 143,000 persons were denied entry to Russia. By April 30, all foreigners living illegally in Russia will have to regularize their status by paying off debts, passing health checks, and passing exams on the Russian language, law, and history. For men, there is a way out: join the Russian Army and serve on the Ukraine front. Yet the governments of the three Central Asian nation warn their citizens that they face criminal prosecution at home if they participate in Russia’s war.

Also starting in April will be plans for children whose parents live in Russia illegally to be denied admittance to government schools. Children who live legally in Russia can only attend school if they pass a Russian language proficiency test. Amnesty International’s Russia Director Natalia Zviagina reacted to the law saying it “is a gross display of xenophobia elevated to the level of state policy.”

Part of the xenophobia comes from the changing face of migration. In the 1990s, most migrants came to Russia from Belarus or Ukraine, nations with populations that largely are Slav, Orthodox, and Russian-speaking. Today’s restrictions are part of an overall policy to encourage Central Asians to work in Russia, without putting down roots. Moscow, home to well over a million Muslims, has only four legally sanctioned mosques. Authorities regularly deny requests to build more.

Russian hostility is the message that deported migrants carry home from Moscow’s main detention center, according to a report last week by Central Asia analyst Bruce Pannier. The title is: “Central Asian Migrants Face Harsh Treatment at Moscow’s Sakharovo Detention Center.”

“The harsh treatment at the Sakharovo center is intentional. It sends a message to migrant laborers, particularly from Central Asia, that Russia does not want them, ignoring the fact Russia needs them to perform the many humble tasks that are essential for Russia’s economy,” he writes for Philadelphia’s Foreign Policy Research Institute. “It is doubtful those who passed through the Sakharovo center will be looking to come back to Russia to work anytime soon, if ever.”

The message is taking hold. Last year, the number of Kyrgyz working in Russia dropped to 350,000, almost half the number of 2023, reports Radio Free Europe. Looking for alternatives to Russia, 100,000 Uzbeks now work in South Korea, sending home almost $500 million a year.

However, as in America, the flip side of Russia’s migrant worker debate is the growing labor shortage that increasingly afflicts the developed world. J.P. Morgan economists cited by Reuters say that the working-age population of developed economies probably peaked in 2023 at 746 million. Over the next 25 years, it is projected to fall by 47 million, or 7 percent.

The problem is acute in Russia. Last week, Deputy Health Minister Viktor Fisenko said  births fell in 2023 to 1,264,354, the lowest number in a quarter century. Over a decade, this represents a 36 percent drop. In December, 73 percent of Russian companies surveyed reported labor shortages. Overall, abou 1.6 million jobs remained unfilled. 

“Putin’s decree will likely further exacerbate Russia’s ongoing labor shortages if a significant number of migrants who work in food service, transportation, and other low-skilled industries either leave Russia or forcibly join the Russian military,” Washington’s Institute for the Study of War writes in a recent analysis.

In one stopgap measure, the number of North Koreans entering Russia increased 12-fold last year, to 13,221, Radio Free Asia reports. Yesterday,  the South Korean National Intelligence Service reported that thousands of North Korean men went to work on construction sites across Russia. Looking to the future, one Russian writer, Zakhar Prilepin, sees Russia’s migration debate as a foretaste of a central struggle over a post-Putin Russia. On one side, he writes in Business-Gazeta, will be the “Black Hundreds” — nationalist groups  seeking a “a mono-ethnic Russian state.”

Facing them will be neo-Stalinists desirous of Russia playing a central role in the creation of a new international order “so that we again stand at the head of a great anti-colonial revolution.” Noting that President Putin seeks to appease both groups, he writes: “The left, Leninist-Stalinists, on the one hand, and the neo-White Guards, Black Hundreds, on the other, already are gathering in two large flocks, and a clash between them seems inevitable.”