There probably is no such thing, but if the MAGA movement were to design its ideal immigrant, the brief might read: arrive legally, have a job lined up before crossing the border, and leave as soon as the work is done. This Trumpian dream could soon become reality in Russia, where the Interior Ministry is proposing a suitably authoritarian system to address historic labor shortages. According to the proposal currently under review, Russian companies in need of cheap labor will contact a state-run migration service to enlist a specialist recruiter that finds foreign workers.
Once a contract is signed, the worker is brought across the border and handed over to their employer, who puts them in designated accommodation and transports them to and from their workplace. When their contract expires, the worker is promptly sent back abroad. Russia’s first deputy interior minister and head of the migration service Andrei Kikot pitched the model to Vladimir Putin in a meeting at the Kremlin on Thursday.
"A civilized method," Putin concluded. One wonders whether the White House might agree. Even as Trump pursues a sweeping immigration crackdown, his administration in January authorized up to 64,716 additional H-2B temporary-worker visas for fiscal year 2026—almost doubling the regular annual cap of 66,000—because American businesses said they could not find enough U.S. workers and faced "irreparable harm" without foreign labor.
The Russian proposal is simple: import the workers, put them right to work, and make damn sure they know when it’s time to leave. It's an awfully dystopian solution to address a very real problem. Russian unemployment reached a historic low of 2.1 percent in May and now sits at just 2.3 percent, prompting Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov to admit earlier this month that Russia had become a "labor-deficit" economy.
The war in Ukraine hasn't helped. Putin said in June that more than 700,000 Russian troops were deployed in the war zone, and 200,000 people signed military contracts in the first six months of this year alone, according to security council deputy Dmitry Medvedev. An open-source investigation by Russian independent outlet Mediazona and BBC Russian has verified almost 250,000 Russian military deaths since February 2022, and warned the real toll is likely much higher.
Meanwhile, the expansion of the defense industry has hoovered workers out of the civilian economy. Russia is also aging, and fast. The country's most economically active 30-to-39-year-old cohort is projected to shrink by 6.3 million people by the end of the decade, and Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova says Russia will need to replace 11.5 million workers retiring from the workforce by 2032.
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