Every large city attracts immigrants looking for a better life— be they University degree-holders or just common workers. These are people who are willing to work hard and usually do not plan to break the law. It just happens that sometimes the only way to get a job in their new homeland is to buy the necessary documents. This is where the semi-legal existence starts.

No one knows the exact number of people working illegally in Moscow, since they are not registered anywhere. But according to expert analysis carried out by the specialists in the Civil Cooperation Society, there are hundreds of thousands of them. The Website www.nelegal.ru, goes even further, saying that there are as many as 3 million people working in Moscow without the required registration.

With the break-up of the Soviet Union, people who were used to calling themselves Russian (though not forgetting their national heritage) have now become citizens of other countries and have to complete a large variety of procedures to get a legal permit to live and work in Moscow.

Yakov Moiseyev, head of the legal department at Hot Line, a regional public organization supporting human rights, said, “All laws permit free movement for the citizens in the territory of the state … It is very hard to defend the rights of people who are working illegally. As a rule, they do not have work contracts and they are afraid of losing their jobs. This is why they are vulnerable to all these violations.”

“In the Soviet Union, the situation with residency permits was also complex,” explained Yelena Alexandrovna, who also works for Hot Line. “Moscow has always needed an aditional work force; for instance, two years before the Olympics in 1980, construction workers were invited in from all over the country. They were registered in communal living places. After living and working in Moscow for 10 years they were given residency permits and separate rooms. After 15 years, they would have received separate apartments. This practice was the so-called ‘Limita.’

“The positive side of the Soviet way of doing things was that the much stricter laws left fewer people out on their own. The stricter control of the Soviet Union also meant you could get help in extreme situations. At present, a person can lie in the street in need of emergency medical help and not get any, just because his papers show he does not live in Moscow.”

Alexandrovna deals with people who have found themselves in challenging life situations. "There is a woman here whose three children cannot go to school because they do not have any registration. This woman, Mahuba Arinova, was born and lived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and then received Russian citizenship and moved to the Moscow region. But her oldest son was refused the right to pass his school final exams because he has no Russian passport, which could not be given since he has no Moscow residence.

“It’s a common problem in Russia,” said Svetlana Gannushkina, chairwoman of the non governmental organization Civil Cooperation Society, that helps refugees and displaced people, she is also a member of the Memorial human rights center. “The laws contradict each other. There is a reciprocal agreement, according to which all citizens of the former Soviet Union can travel freely with their internal passports. Once they get on the territory of the Russian Federation, however, they are required to carry an international travel passport, which they usually do not have, and are viewed as foreign citizens.”

“It’s a shame that our country cannot take due care of its citizens and the people it should be responsible for,” she continued. “We invited people from Afghanistan to come here, live and study, and then just left them to fend for themselves and they have nothing to do but move cardboard boxes in markets.”

There is no problem getting to Moscow. Things start getting tough, though, when a person tries to find a job or a place to live. Immigrants cannot receive legal registrations if they do not have anybody living in Moscow permanently who can help them. But as they say, where there is a will, there is a way — you can get the papers if you pay the money. This encourages corruption in state organizations and, besides, you cannot be sure that you will get the right legal papers.

“I wanted to solve this problem quickly,” said Olesya, 28, from Ukraine. “I paid the money and got the registration paper, but the first Militia officer who came up to me to check my documents said it was a fake. So I lost the money and had to bribe the officer.”

Olesya’s story is an example of the saddest kind: “I finished studying to be a nurse and worked as one for six years. You know that salaries for medical nurses are extremely low and I could not support myself after I split with my boyfriend.” So she decided to come to Moscow where, with no registration and place to live, she started her search for a job.

The story ended in a distressing way: She came into contact with pimps and, with her knowledge of massage, wound up going into prostitution. Right now she is working as a call girl and still dreaming of finishing higher education courses and changing her way of life. “But it is so hard to refuse the money and what it brings,” she said. And it is true that few legal jobs out there would offer the same level of compensation.

The stories of illegal immigrants in Moscow are often very similar with only a few variations. They come here hoping to find a job and a better life, and usually end up doing something that is lower than what they are qualified to do.

Sergei Lozovsky, originally from Poltava, Ukraine, works in a small PC-distribution firm as a technical support. His workplace is loaded with processors, soundcards, CDs, cables, etc. “I wouldn’t be able to work with this kind of equipment at home and wouldn’t have access to the newest achievements of the computer industry that are available here in Moscow,” he said.

Although he is a good professional, he works for money that can hardly be imagined in the world of high-tech jobs. "Would anyone born in Moscow work for less than $100 a month?” he asked. But once you prove that you are a good professional, where you were born shouldn’t matter much. Lozovsky received a 200 percent salary increase after a lengthy period of finding it hard to get by.

Galina Nikolayevna, 58, a visitor to the Civil Cooperation Society, tells a story of those who say they try to help people in need. “ZHEK (the local housing maintenance organization) hires people for seasonal work, such as cleaning dry leaves off of streets in autumn and ridding roofs and streets of snow during winter. They give you a room with no windows in some old house that is in danger of collapsing at any minute.” People have no choice but to agree to the humiliating conditions and low wages that are not even paid in full. “They treat you as if you were some kind of animal. They swear at you and threaten you. There have been cases when people were promised 2,000 rubles for a month’s work but only got 700.” She added, “You have no choice but try to live with it.”

But even these inhuman conditions are not stable, since those in charge try to rotate their labor force. “They are afraid that people will find out about the infractions they’re committing,” Nikolayevna said.

Though they arouse annoyance and pity, immigrants contribute a lot to the city’s economy. They take jobs no native Muscovite ever would and pay rent for their apartments while trying to put enough food on the table. Their only fault is that they were not born in this opportunity-giving city. They suffer from the contempt of people who see them only as criminals and freeloaders. And, as if on purpose, legal complexities make the lives of the “illegal” — if the term can be applied where laws contradict each other and it is not clear what “legal” means — immigrants even more unbearable.