Ever since she was deported from Russia last year, Dilfuza Hayitova has been looking for work in her native city of Termez, in southeastern Uzbekistan. But jobs are hard to find in the country, forcing the single mother to survive with a meager income from recycling plastic bottles and empty cans.
Unable to afford rent, Hayitova lives in her elderly father’s house. The some $2.50 a day that Hayitova earns is barely enough for “bread and other most basic needs,” she says.
“I face a constant shortage of money, and it is suffocating. There are no jobs here,” says Hayitova, who is in her late 30s. “I wouldn’t have survived without my father’s help.”
Hayitova is among tens of thousands of Central Asian workers who are struggling to cope amid chronic job shortages in their home countries after recently being deported from Russia.
Moscow recently reported a record-high number of deportations and rejections of efforts to enter the country in the first seven months of 2024 amid an apparent anti-migrant drive that mostly targeted Tajik, Uzbek, and Kyrgyz citizens.
More than 143,000 people were denied entry to Russia from January to July, a significant spike from 2023, the Russian Interior Ministry reported.
Nearly 93,000 people were deported from Russia, in a 53 percent rise from the same time last year.
Additionally, the number of temporary and permanent residence permits issued from January to July dropped by 44 and 18 percent, respectively, compared to last year.
Dilfuza Hayitova earns about $2.50 a day selling empty cans and plastic bottles.
The ministry said 1,053 naturalized citizens were stripped of their Russian passports during these seven months.
The number of police raids targeting migrant-owned businesses rose by more than 200 percent, the Interior Ministry said.
While the ministry did not provide a breakdown of the statistics for each month, an unprecedented surge in deportations and entry refusals began after the March 22 terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall outside Moscow.
Russia claims that attack on the concert venue, which killed 145 people, was carried out by four Tajik citizens. It further fueled a long-standing anti-migrant sentiment in Russia, which hosts millions of workers from Central Asia.
Hayitova says she was detained in a police raid in late March 2023, just days after the deadly attack. Police told the Uzbek migrant she was being deported for violating the terms of her work permit.
Hayitova, who earned about $25 a day washing dishes at a Moscow restaurant, says she would go back to Russia if she could.
Uzbekistan officially claims to have a relatively low unemployment rate of 6.8 percent, but many believe it doesn’t reflect the reality. Official employment figures include seasonal and temporary jobs, especially in the agriculture sector. Workers also complain about low wages.
'Where Are The Promised Jobs?'
The situation is even worse in neighboring Tajikistan, where more than half of all households depend on remittances from migrants in Russia.
Mirmoh Shamsova, a resident of the capital, Dushanbe, hasn’t been able to find any work since she returned to Russia after losing her job in the wake of the Crocus attack.
The housewife had become a migrant laborer four years ago after her husband died from an illness and the family was left with “big debts.”
Shamsova says she earned an average of about $30 a day while in Russia juggling different jobs: cooking and cleaning at a private home and working at a candy factory.
Police carry out a raid targeting migrant workers in Kazan, Russia, in July.
The Tajik Labor Ministry announced that more than 100,000 new vacancies were created in the first half of the year alone.
“Where are these jobs so I could apply and get one?” Shamsova asked. “Wherever you go, even to get a job as a janitor, they ask you for $150 to $200 in bribes. I don’t have that much money.”
The allegation of widespread bribery and a shortage of jobs has been shared by many Tajiks looking for work.
Shamsova says she is waiting for the situation to “calm down” in Russia so she could return. But there is no sign it will change anytime soon.
'I Blame Our Own Government'
Russian authorities continue to deport or deny entry to Central Asian nationals -- migrants, students, and others -- regardless of the validity of their passports and permits.
Some of those affected claim they were verbally insulted and even beaten by Russian officers in detention centers at airports and border crossings.
Tajik Muhammadjon Boev, who studies at the Michurin Agriculture University in Russia’s Tambov region, says he was detained at the Saratov land border crossing as he was returning from Tajikistan.
“They confiscated my passport and student ID and took me to a detention center. They kept me there for three days; they mocked me, verbally assaulted, and beat me…. They almost broke my hand,” he said in an open letter to the Russian ambassador in Dushanbe.
Boev claims he was expelled from Russia for no valid reason. Education officials in Dushanbe said at least five other Tajik students have faced similar treatment in Russia this year.
At least 100 Uzbek passengers on a Samarkand-Moscow flight were denied entry to Russia at Sheremetyevo Airport on July 30.
Three of the passengers who gave only their first names -- Asliddin, Iskandar, and Siroj -- shared the videos they recorded of the day-and-half they were kept at the airport and their deportation flight home.
Dozens of passengers from a Samarkand-Moscow flight were denied entry to Russia in July..
The men told Current Time that airport officials took their fingerprints and DNA samples before announcing they could not return to Russia for 20 years.
“They did not give any reason as to why they were deporting us. We haven’t done anything illegal,” they said.
Siroj, 23, told Current Time that he and many others on the flight had borrowed money to buy tickets to Moscow, hoping they could pay it back with the money they would earn in Russia.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do. There are not many jobs in Uzbekistan. You can find work for a salary of about $240 a month, but this money is not enough to live on,” he said. “I used to work at a farm, but prices for the harvest dropped this year, so I decided to go to Russia.”
Russian authorities put the number of Central Asian workers in Russia at around 10.5 million, but other sources give lower figures.
In Russia’s Orenburg region, Tajik national Niso Shermatova hasn’t been able to submit her application for permanent residency. The bakery worker says she is eligible to apply because her husband is a Russian citizen and she is a “law-abiding person” who works and pays taxes.
Shermatova said she was told by a migration officer in September that the agency has “instructions not to accept applications from Tajik nationals for the time being.”
“I don’t like how Russia treats us, migrants, but sometimes I think Russia and other foreign countries don’t owe us anything,” Shermatova told RFE/RL. “I am angry with our own government, the Tajik government, which doesn’t care about its citizens. If we had a normal life at home, we wouldn’t be searching for a better life abroad.”