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I. MIGRATION FROM UKRAINE FOR EMPLOYMENT WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL MIGRATION PROCESSES
7. THE PROBLEMS OF RETURN AND DEPORTATION OF UKRAINIAN MIGRANT WORKERS TO THEIR HOMELAND
Illegal migrant workers account for a substantial number of our citizens who are deported from the host countries for violations of the rules of stay and other administrative offenses. According to the information the Commissioner requested from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Committee for Guarding the State Border, 23,620 of our citizens were deported to Ukraine in the period from 2000 to 2002. Among the most frequently cited reasons were the following:
§ violation of duration of stay in the country stated in the entry visa;
§ sojourn without a valid passport;
§ employment without a proper permit;
§ offenses related to forgery and use of visa documents;
§ illegal crossing of the host country’s border;
§ crimes entailing criminal liability;
§ refusal of granting refugee status (typical for the Scandinavian countries);
§ return to the country of origin after serving a prison term or early termination of prison term.
Of these reasons the most common were violations of visa rules in a host country and employment without a relevant permit. Fig. 1.5 presents data on the largest number of Ukrainian deportees in 2002.
As we see, the largest number of Ukrainian citizens was deported from Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Italy – the principal destinations of our migrant workers.
The scope of deportation depends on a number of factors, such as stringent government control over the stay of illegal migrants and the enterprises that employ them as well as the amount of funding a country allocates for deportation. In the opinion of the Commissioner, this explains why so few Ukrainian migrant workers are deported from Russia where their number is the largest. The latter is also explained by the visa-free entry regulations introduced between Ukraine and Russia and the liberal treatment of non-documented Ukrainian workers by Russia’s bodies of state authority.
Interestingly, a downward trend in the deportation of Ukrainian citizens was observed in 2001–2002 (see Fig.1.6)
Fig. 1.5. Countries from which the largest number of Ukrainian citizens were deported in 2002
Thousand persons
In the period under review fewer Ukrainian deportees were also registered in Turkey, Greece, Germany and Portugal. One of the reasons behind the decline, as the Commissioner sees it, is primarily the large-scale legalization of illegal migrant workers, particularly in Greece and Portugal.
For all that, the Commissioner is receiving complaints about the rights of Ukrainian citizens being impaired during deportation by the law enforcement bodies of foreign states.
For example, Y.Kozhemiakin of Kyiv, resided permanently in Germany for seven years, and in October 2000 was deported to Ukraine under the charge of having violated German laws on the status of aliens.
Since the age of seven Mr.Kozhemiakin has been suffering a severe form of diabetes and is insulin dependent. While in Germany, he was under constant medical supervision by local doctors who implanted in his body a new-generation artificial insulin pump, thus restoring his normal life. Upon deportation he is actually on the verge of life and death, because such a pump is not maintained in Ukraine, while insulin is difficult to get by.
The Commissioner forwarded a letter to the ambassadors plenipotentiary and extraordinary of Ukraine to Germany and of Germany to Ukraine with an appeal to facilitate the applicant’s exercise of his right to life. Besides, a petition was forwarded to the competent authorities of Germany with a request to look into the matter and lift Mr.Kozhemiakin’s ban on entry of Germany, taking into consideration the exceptional circumstances of his case.
Regrettably, the German side did not find it possible to heed the proposal of the Commissioner and the case has not been resolved to this day.
Another case concerns Zh.Tarasova, a Ukrainian citizen who arrived in Israel as an honorary guest on the invitation of Y.Palamarchuk (Rondel), an Israeli citizen residing in Haifa. During the Second World War, the host, then a 13-year-old Jewish girl, was saved from death by the grandmother of the applicant – N.Tarasova-Polishchuk who on August 31, 1997 was awarded the high title of the World’s Nations Righteous by the Jad-Vashem Institute.
As Zh.Tarasova informed the Commissioner, the Israeli police detained her and took away her foreign passport and return air ticket when she arrived in Israel at Ben-Gurion airport on April 2, 2002. For two days she was held captive at the airport in a special room for deportees, suffering from insults and humiliation. The young woman was accused of arriving in the country for the purpose of illegal employment. For this reason she was denied entry and deported to Ukraine on April 4.
To protect the rights of Zh.Tarasova, the Commissioner forwarded letters to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Israel to Ukraine, Ms.Anna Azari.
This problem, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed, was discussed during Ukrainian-Israeli consular consultations, but the Israeli side did not see anything unlawful in what happened in Israel. A similar conclusion was also forwarded to the Commissioner by the Israeli ambassador to Ukraine.
Deportation is also closely related to the issuance of return documents to those Ukrainian citizens who lost their passports.
The people who apply to Ukrainian diplomatic authorities to be issued such documents cite most frequently the following reasons for the loss of their passports:
§ theft of personal effects and documents (as a rule, in public places, public transport, as well as in criminally dangerous places);
§ confiscation of documents from women who against their will are used in the sex industry;
§ failure to return documents to persons who – to execute contracts for purchase or sale of, say, cars and other property – entrusted the documents to citizens of the host countries;
§ loss of documents by the applicants through negligence;
§ mechanical damage of documents;
§ loss of documents by the migration services of the host countries during the procedure of deportation.
According to the information of the Ukrainian Embassy in Russia, quite a few Ukrainian citizens “lose” their national passports in order to acquire dual citizenship, because when Russian citizenship is endued the preceding secession from Ukrainian citizenship is not required.
Also, many of our citizens take the loss of their passports rather lightly and do not know who to apply to in such cases.
Both a citizen and a body of state authority in a host country can initiate the issuance of documents for return to the country of origin.
In some countries there is an upward trend of migration services of the host countries issuing return documents. While in 2001 return documents were issued to 40% of Ukrainian citizens upon request of the British authorities, in the first six months of 2002 this rate was 60%.
Within this context some Ukrainian citizens tend to misuse their irregular situation when applying for return documents, especially in countries with a substantial number of illegal migrant workers.
According to the information of Ukrainian diplomatic missions in Western Europe, the overwhelming majority of persons who apply for return documents do so in order to evade responsibility for their illegal sojourn in a host country, because anyone crossing the borders of the Schengen zone is entered in a single database, which automatically imposes a ban on entry throughout five years. Therefore, applying for a return document is more attractive, since it costs much less compared with the inevitable trouble the ban on entry to the EU implies and the prospect of blasting the chances of traveling abroad for employment in the future.
But now and then unjustified problems arise when the return documents are executed.
The time for executing such documents can range from several days to several months, depending on the promptness of the local bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. In the majority of regions, as the MIA informed, the materials they receive are handled rather promptly, but in some regions unjustified delays occur.
It should also be noted that a citizen who lost a foreign passport frequently has to travel over large distances and wait a long time until his return documents are executed, thereby incurring considerable expenses.
Now and then Ukrainian citizens cause the unjustified delays themselves when the issue of return documents is initiated by the migration service of the host country. In such cases Ukrainian citizens frequently provide false information to continue their sojourn in the country.
In the opinion of the Commissioner for Human Rights, additional measures have to be taken to make more effective the interaction between the MIA and corresponding local departments of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the identification of persons who execute the documents for return to Ukraine.
There is also the need to resolve the question of the cost of executing the return documents, which range from US $5 to US $100 depending in what country they are handled. According to the information of the Ukrainian diplomatic missions abroad, an illegal migrant frequently does not have the money to pay a consular fee, while the corresponding services in the host countries frequently regard the requirement to pay as an additional insult for our citizens. This, in turn, impacts negatively on the image of Ukraine.
The Commissioner for Human Rights believes that the Ukrainian consular authorities abroad should more flexibly take into account the circumstances of a definite case and relieve Ukrainian citizens from payment of consular fees when issuing them documents for return to their homeland. For this purpose it is necessary to reconsider the relevant procedures governing this issue.
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