Selective approaches to regulation of long-term migration in the Russian Federation

The number of foreign citizens that a country can admit without negative consequences for its economy in general and its labor market in particular, as well as for the socio-political situation, is limited and individual for each country. In this regard, states legislations in addition to the existing conditions set quotas. The purpose of the quota is to quantitatively limit the influx of foreign nationals into a country based on its socio-economic needs and capabilities in a given period. The quota is spent in order of priority without any differentiation and is a restrictive rather than a selection mechanism for ensuring a state’s migration policy. Most often, the selection approach is mentioned in the legislations regulating labor and, in the first place, skilled migration. Only in the context of this subspecies of migration, it is possible to talk of the inequality of candidates based on the different levels of their professional competence and capacity for adaptation to the host country social environment. In the context of skilled labor migration, the role of education, work experience and the ability to communicate freely in the host state language increase significantly. This type of migration is voluntary and aims at mutual satisfaction of the needs of a state in strengthening its economy with highly professional labor force and the needs of foreign citizens in getting the best conditions for realizing their potential. The laws of the market economy shape it. A state possessing the «demand» must, in order to best ensure its own socio-economic needs, build an effective system of evaluation of the «supply» by foreign citizens.