The mechanism of regulating migration processes between our countries needs to be improved. Some positive steps have been taken in this direction recently.

With the active participation of the Federal Migration Service of Russia (FMS), a number of documents were prepared that allow for more effective regulation of labor migration issues.

In October 2008, during the visit of Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Thiet to Russia, three agreements were signed in the field of migration between our countries.

The agreement on temporary employment of Vietnamese citizens in Russia and Russian citizens in Vietnam for the first time clearly regulates the issues of attracting labor migrants, guarantees their rights and freedoms. In addition, a protocol to the agreement was signed, which allows regulating the status of Vietnamese migrants who remained in Russia after the collapse of the USSR and did not have an official status for a long time.

The protocol sets out three conditions under which Vietnamese citizens who arrived to work in the USSR under the agreement of April 2, 1981, can continue their work in Russia. They need to obtain a work permit in Russia (and the protocol stipulates a simplified procedure for obtaining a permit), register for migration in accordance with Russian legislation, and register at the embassy or consulate of Vietnam. You must also have a valid national passport and meet these conditions within six months of the entry into force of this document.

In our opinion, this agreement will finally settle the status of many Vietnamese people, remove them from the informal economy, reduce opportunities for corruption, and allow people to feel safer in Russia.

The second document is an agreement on cooperation in combating illegal migration. It expresses the intention of Russia and Vietnam to implement measures to prevent illegal migration. The fact is that part of the migration from Vietnam is illegal. In this regard, it is important that Russia managed to convince the Vietnamese authorities to take responsibility for coordinating actions in the field of not only combating illegal migrants, but also to take measures to prevent these flows.

Finally, the third document is the readmission agreement. Readmission refers to the consent of a State to take back its migrant citizens who are located on the territory of another State in violation of the law. This document will help resolve issues with transit illegal migrants who are trying to get through the territory of Russia to Western European countries. This direction of migration policy can be called a "breakthrough" for Russian-Vietnamese migration relations.

VISA WILDS

Since 2009 Vietnam unilaterally canceled visas for Russian citizens for up to ¹⁵ days1. This has a positive effect on increasing the flow of Russian tourists to Vietnam, making it easier for businessmen and scientists to stay in Vietnam.

On the contrary, the Russian migration policy considers Vietnam as a "migration insecure country". This is reflected in passport and visa procedures.

Vietnamese people need to obtain a Russian visa, the basis for issuing it is an invitation issued through the Ministry of Internal Affairs by the inviting organization. If we are talking about migrant workers, then the employer does this at the expense of quotas for attracting foreign labor. Study migrants receive invitations from the university. Based on this permission, a visa is issued. During the survey, we found that about 46% of Vietnamese were in Russia on the basis of work visas and 33% - on study visas. The share of a guest visa is very significant - it reaches 14%.

It must be admitted that Russia's visa policy towards Vietnam is currently asymmetric, visa issuance procedures are opaque, highly bureaucratic, and it takes a considerable amount of time to obtain a visa even for scientists from Vietnam.

Ending. For the beginning, see: Asia and Africa Today, 2011, No. 6. The study was conducted within the framework of grants from the Russian Foundation for Natural Science N 08 - 03 - 94833 a/V and N 10-03-00912a/V.

The situation has changed dramatically, and currently the strict visa policy seriously hinders the development of relations between our countries.

EXPORT POTENTIAL LABOR AND EDUCATIONAL MIGRANTS

In the course of the study, we tried to give an approximate assessment of the migration potential in the regions of the study, including those focused on Russia.

Vietnam's population increased by almost 33 million between 1980 and 2009, reaching 86 million. During the period under review, there were different rates of population growth in the country, but the largest figure was registered in 2005 - more than 2 million people.

The age structure of the country's population has changed in recent years in the direction of reducing the share of children and increasing the share of the population of working and retirement age. Vietnam's working-age population was about 57.9 million, or 67.4% of the country's population.

Since it is quite difficult to obtain official statistics on the population by province in Vietnam, we used the above figures for our calculations and used them to calculate the number of working-age population in the studied provinces. The migration potential assessment was based on a survey conducted in 2009 and some very limited statistical data. ²

At the first stage, we calculated the approximate number of people who had work and study experience abroad. According to research, it accounted for about 12.5% of the working-age population. Further, in our survey, 35.7% of respondents said that they want to work abroad in various countries. Russia, unfortunately, does not occupy a significant place among the most important countries for them. Only 3.3% of our respondents want to work in Russia. On this basis, the corresponding calculations were made (Table).

Table

Assessment of the migration potential of Vietnam's provinces (thousand people)

Vietnam's population is characterized by a young gender and age structure, which provides a good basis for exporting labor resources and training migrants. Our calculations show that the country has a significant migration potential - at the time of the study, it was approximately 2.6 million people. In the studied provinces, the migration potential was 723.4 thousand people, including about 200 thousand in the capital of Vietnam - the city of Hanoi. This is how many Vietnamese people can potentially be labor and educational migrants.

However, the implementation of migration policies will depend on a number of factors, both in Vietnam and in the host countries. First of all, the Vietnamese economy is currently

time is actively developing and consumes a significant part of the labor force. And the countries that attract migrant workers from Vietnam have different economic and political priorities, which may change. In addition, much depends on the migration policy of the host country, on the activity of state structures, companies, and private employment agencies.

Calculations show that in Vietnam, the migration potential focused specifically on Russia may amount to 85.3 thousand people. In the studied provinces, the potential was 22.5 thousand people, including 6.4 thousand in Hanoi. We can say that Russia has exhausted its potential to accept Vietnamese migrants at the current level of migration policy.

Recall that in 2008, there were 99.2 thousand people in Russia. Vietnamese labor and educational migrants. This means that we will not be able to accept more Vietnamese than we currently have, given the current approach to regulating migration from Vietnam, the state of the labor market and the education system. Otherwise, without a conceptual change in the migration policy towards Vietnam, without a transition to the active formation of migration potential focused specifically on Russia, we will not be able to receive more Vietnamese migrants than we do now.

First of all, it is necessary to understand that Vietnamese migration is necessary for some sectors of the Russian economy, it is much more efficient and profitable from an economic and political point of view than, for example, Chinese migration. It seems that it is necessary to allocate separate quotas to Vietnam for industries and regions of Russia where the work of Vietnamese workers is necessary and economically justified.

Taking into account the long distance from Vietnam to Russia and the more stable migration attitudes of Vietnamese people, it seems advisable to conclude long - term contracts with them and issue work visas for longer periods - for example, for 3 to 4 years (currently the maximum period is 1 year). We need to develop a network of firms and institutions that will train migrant workers in Vietnam even before they migrate to Russia.

It would be good to organize training in the Russian language and the basics of Russian culture in Vietnam, which will help prepare labor migrants for life in Russia and form the flow of educational migrants. An important area of work may be the activation of activities related to the recruitment of educational migrants to Russia. It is necessary to restore lost scientific and educational ties, open Russian language courses, distribute literature and information about Russian universities, and allocate a sufficient number of scholarships and grants for students from Vietnam.

Only such drastic measures can make it possible to increase the migration potential from Vietnam for Russia. Otherwise, we will be satisfied mainly with the potential of labor and educational migrants that we have now.

^{Ryazantsev S. V.} 1, Kuznetsov N. G. Migratsiya iz v Nama v Rossii: tendentsii i regulirovanie [Migration from Vietnam to Russia: trends and regulation]: state, problems, trends: A collection of scientific articles. Under the general editorship. Romodanovsky Co., Tyurkin M. L. M., FMS of Russia, 2009, p. 249.

² Statistical Yearbook of Vietnam 2009. Hanoi, Statistical Publishing House, p. 29 - 30.

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