A Study On Russian Immigration Policy In Transition Period

Under the global background, having exerted great influence on international relationship and national security, the issue of immigration becomes one of the most important nontraditional security research fields in international society national state. Since 1990s, with the transition of Russian domestic politics and economics and with the increase of the country's open degree, the immigration within and out of the country has become an important social phenomenon. To Russia, population security has always been its"bottleneck"to hamper its social development, but the process of immigration has a great impact on its population security. While the immigrants are meeting the demands of labor required by its economical development, they have also brought a series of complicated social, economical and political problems. The importance of immigration issue has entailed Russian government to pay great attention to formulating and revising its immigration policy, which has become an integral part in its national political system. Therefore, a study on Russian immigration policy in Transition Period is significant not only for making the knowledge of Russian political, economical and social transformation but for deepening Sino-Russia political trust and economic cooperation. The paper, with the subject of"Russian immigration policy", systematically studies Russian population situation, labor market, immigration process in and out of the country, the development and evolution of immigration policy in the Transition Period since the disintegration of the former Soviet Union.The first chapter, Introduction, elaborates the research background, significance and the existing research foundation of the paper, introducing the structure and study method of the paper and pointing out several original viewpoints and some issues for further study.The second chapter concerns related concepts and theoretical review. On one hand, it defines such related concepts as immigrants, immigration policy and classifies immigrants and immigration policy according to their attributes. On the other, it summarizes related theories and development of immigration study. Chapter Three concerns Russian population situation and labor market in the Transition Period. The research on Russian situation and labor market condition paves the way for studying its immigration process and immigration policy. Russia is now in"the fourth population crisis"because of the constant decrease in its total population and increase in demand in labor market since Transition Period. On one hand, Russian population crisis is deeply analyzed in the chapter through the aspects of Russian population fluctuation, population natural structure including age and gender, social structure including population nationality, education and employment, and regional structure including population geography and distribution of urban and rural area. In addition, the features of Russian population crisis are generalized, which include insufficient total number, structural imbalance, the alarming quality and sustained worsening condition. Russian population situation greatly influences Russian political, economical and social stabilization and development. On the other hand, the formation and development, functioning and regulation of Russian labor market are studied in this chapter. Furthermore, combined the two above-mentioned parts, this chapter analyzes the various influence of current population situation and labor market have on the formulation, implementation and revision of immigration policy.Chapter Four concerns the evolution of Russian immigration process and policy in Transition. Firstly, it studies current international immigration process and the evolution of immigration policy from a general perspective. Under the global background, current international immigration process presents the characteristics of scale expansion, regional centralization, a plurality of immigration process, network and illegal immigration, which has exerted great influence on the orientation of international immigration policy. Secondly, this chapter focuses on Russian immigration process since Transition. Current Russian immigration process has unique regional international background and the domestic social, demographic background, for it takes root in the country's social political and economical transformation. Therefore, with the different features and changes shown in the immigration scale, origin and characteristics, the immigration has complicated and deep influence on Russian society. Thirdly, Russian immigration management system evolution is studied, including resettlement management organization and the changes in immigration policy. Russian government attaches great importance to the formulation of its immigration policy for the importance of immigration. Russian government has constantly adjusted and strengthened supervision mechanism and implementation of the immigration policy since Transition in order to regulate its immigration process effectively.Chapter five, the system analysis of immigration policy in Russia, focuses on the system analysis of the immigration policy in Russia. On one hand, the chapter studies the constitution of system from the aspects of legal basis, implementation method and means, mechanism system and financial support of immigration policy. On the other hand, the defects and its causes of current Russia's immigration policy are analyzed. The defects include unclear policy objective, policy instability, ineffective policy execution, inadequate support of policy implementation and so on. The causes of the defects are attributed not only to the problems of government administration but also to the public. They are, in fact, caused by the combined action of many factors.Chapter six studies development direction and way and influence of Russia's immigration policy. Firstly, it predicts the development direction of Russian immigration policy in a scientific way. Currently, Russian immigration policy is in a perfecting process, so the principle of stipulating policy should be in accordance with population economy and geopolitics, with the regulation of immigration process as its basic target while the domestication of immigrant as its prior target and management of legal labor immigrant as its key target. Secondly, the effective ways are concluded to gradually perfect the immigration policy, which includes: unified and strict system formulation; scientific and simplified immigration procedures; the transformation from direct plan management to indirect process management; sound and integrated supervision system; perfecting public welfare and security measures; and financial support system with immigration policy as its emphasis. Thirdly, the chapter deals with Russian immigration issues and the influence of the change in its immigration policy on Russian national strategy, Sino-Russian relationship, Sino-Russian economical cooperation. It provides useful suggestion and references to the enhancement Sino-Russian political trust and economical cooperationFinally, the summery of the viewpoints is made in conclusion. Firstly, Russia is currently facing the serious problems of population crisis and labor deficiency. Immigrants are an important and effective way to solve or alleviate the problem. Secondly, Russian government attaches such great importance to the issue of immigrants as to regulate immigration process through emphasizing immigration management mechanism. Thirdly, the stipulating policy should be in accordance with population economy and geopolitics, with the regulation of immigration process as its basic target. Fourthly, since Russian government places importance on immigration issue and its revision to immigrant management, Sino-Russia human resources cooperation has broad prospects. More efforts should be made to push the enlargement Sino-Russia cooperation scale so as to standardize and optimize cooperation structure and order.