Russian Orthodox Church urges fighting shadow economy created by migrants, corrupted officials over Biryulyovo events
MOSCOW. Oct 14 (Interfax) - The Moscow Patriarchate said it is urging putting an end to the shadow economy and ethnic crimes in Moscow.
"It is no coincidence that the incident in the Moscow district of Biryolyovo has raised the discussion of migrant labor policies in Moscow and throughout Russia. The existing situation is absolutely intolerable and just talking around it while waiting for new explosive incidents to betray own people is not right," Protopope Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of the Synodal Department for Church and Society Relations, told an Interfax correspondent on Monday.
Moscow and the Moscow region should be cleaned off "criminal sewers living by their own laws, by the rules of lawlessness, to be exact," Chaplin said.
"It is necessary to declare a holy war on the shadow economy and corruption related to it, ethnic crimes, the rudeness of those who arrive, which in response provokes dangerous radicalism promising nothing good to our society. Namely the shadow economy created by migrants and covered by corrupt officials is the source of the problems emerged," Chaplin said.
Chaplin said he proposed studying successful policies in EU countries regarding immigrants and to try to use them in Russia.
"Why can't these laws and regulations be applied in such a way that only people who are registered in Moscow and the Moscow region are able to find a job? And make registration issuable to only those who have accommodation here by ownership or long-term lease? Why can't it be done so that the fines for hiring illegal migrants and people without registration are millions of rubles so that dishonest bosses understand - one-two cases like this and they are broke forever?" Chaplin said.
"And there is no need to say that the Moscow economy will stop due to such measures. The majority of Moscow residents do not need such an economy. The situation in which millions people - the majority of the residents of the Russian capital and its suburbs - suffer over the dishonest enrichment of a few," Chaplin said.
