By Lucy Papachristou and Nazarali Pirnazarov

LONDON/HULBUK, Tajikistan (Reuters) - When Abubakar Yusfi boarded a flight to Moscow in July, he thought he wouldn't be home for years.

The 23-year-old from a small village in Tajikistan hoped to join his uncle and cousins ​​working in construction in the Russian capital and save enough money to return home and find a bride. But Yusuf only saw Moscow from the airplane window.

Held for six hours at Vnukovo airport, he said border officials stamped his passport with a deportation order and put him on a plane back to Dushanbe, the Tajik capital, the next day. Reuters could not determine why he was denied entry.

"I wanted to go to Russia to make money," said Yousufi, standing near his family's cotton fields outside the district capital of Hulbuk, about 15 miles (24 km) from the Afghan border.

"Now I don't know what to do."

Nearly nine months after Islamist militants from Tajikistan attacked Crocus City Hall, a concert venue near Moscow, killing 145 people, migrant workers from Central Asia describe growing hostility toward them in Russia. are

Others are being turned back at the border or deported as changes in the law make it easier to expel them, while a drop in the number of Tajiks leaving to work in Russia shows how a The economic model that both countries have relied on is under strain.

Reuters spoke to six Tajiks who lived in Russia or who wanted to do so to find out how their lives have changed since the March 22 shooting, the deadliest terrorist attack on Russian soil. One of the attacks.

Three, including Yousfi, said they were eager to work in Russia but were turned away at the border. They expressed dissatisfaction with their situation in Tajikistan, where they are working menial jobs and collecting debts.

In Russia, the trio said increased street harassment and frequent police raids were making life more difficult for migrants there, a concern also raised by rights advocates.

This trend has economic and security implications for both countries.

Russia's nearly 6 million migrant workers play a vital role in keeping its wartime economy afloat at a time when labor shortages are fueling wage growth and high inflation. Central Asian states including Tajikistan — a landlocked, heavily agricultural country with a history of Islamist violence — supply the bulk of that workforce.

President Vladimir Putin said in February that Russia needed 2.5 million more workers to grow its economy, pointing to shortages in construction and manufacturing, sectors traditionally favored by immigrants.

At the same time, nationalist politicians, fueled by the war and militant violence in Ukraine, are making anti-foreigner rhetoric and pushing laws that affect the lives of immigrants working in Russia or those who wish to do so. .

Impoverished Tajikistan, for which the export of labor to Russia is an economic lifeline, has criticized the changes.

"We cannot be alarmed by the trend of widespread violations of the basic rights and freedoms of our citizens," Tajik Prime Minister Kohir Rasulzoda told a meeting of Russian and Tajik officials in October, using unusually blunt language.

Regional analysts warn that the combination of unemployment at home and underemployment in Russia could fuel domestic political unrest and make migrant workers more susceptible to recruitment by extremist groups.

Security analysts say dozens of Tajiks have joined an Islamic State branch based in Afghanistan, which shares a border with Tajikistan. The group known as the Islamic State of Khorasan (ISIS-K) claimed responsibility for the Crocus City Hall attack.

"If you have a lot of young people without jobs in your region ... there is a risk that there will be discontent," said Temur Umarov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.

Other than exporting migrants to Russia, Dushanbe "doesn't have a Plan B," he added.

Tajikistan's Foreign Ministry, Russia's Federal Migration Service and its Economy Ministry did not respond to questions for this article. The Kremlin declined to comment.

Pressure on immigrants

Immigration is an emotional issue in many countries and has played a major role in politics from Europe to the United States.

Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and a close ally of Putin, has repeatedly said that large numbers of immigrants pose an existential threat to Russia and its traditional values.

Migrants, Kirill recently said, come from a different "historical experience" and follow "a different civilizational code."

Since the Crocus City Hall attack, Russian lawmakers have put forward a raft of measures to increase restrictions on foreign workers and make it easier to deport them.

Several Russian regions, including Moscow, have banned foreigners from working in fields such as medicine, education or social services.

The lower house of parliament, the Duma, is also considering proposals to expand the list of deportable offenses to include hooliganism and disobedience to the police.

Russia deported 50% more migrants in the first half of 2024 — about 100,000 in total — than in the same period in 2023, according to Alexander Gorovoi, an interior ministry official who oversees migration policy.

Gorovoy told the Kommersant newspaper in September that the number of immigration-related workplace inspections has more than doubled this year.

Tajik Farooq, 32, who has lived in Russia since he was a teenager, said he has never felt more unsafe there.

"Whether or not your papers are in order, they can detain you for two to three days for investigation. Some people's passports have been taken away. Many people are being deported ... without giving any explanation," He told Reuters. The condition is that only his first name was used for fear of reprisal.

After arriving in Russia in 2011, Farrukh said he earned enough money working on construction sites to bring his wife and children with him and became a Russian citizen. But earlier this year, he sent his family back to Tajikistan over safety concerns.

"If it wasn't for my debt problem, I would have already left Russia," Farrukh said.

Employers say they need more immigrants, not fewer.

A recent survey by the Russian job site hh.ru showed that 53% of surveyed companies do not have enough foreign workers. Construction and service industries in particular depend heavily on such workers.

Russian unemployment is at a record low of 2.3%, a labor shortage exacerbated by mobilization for the Ukraine war and the exodus of hundreds of thousands following the 2022 invasion.

In November, VTB CEO Andrei Kostin, one of Russia's top bankers, said Russia's economy would not breathe without immigrants.

"It's easy to get them out, but somebody needs to do the work," Kostin said.

Economic consequences

In Tajikistan, the economic consequences of the squeeze are already being felt.

Last year, remittances from workers abroad accounted for more than a third of its GDP. Average monthly wages in Tajikistan are about a quarter of what they are in Russia.

This year, the World Bank predicted that Tajik economic growth would slow to 6.5% from 8.3% in 2023, citing a possible decline in remittances as a factor.

About 392,000 people left Tajikistan to work abroad between January and June - 16% less than the same period last year, Tajik Labor, Migration and Employment Minister Gulnora Hassanzoda told reporters. Almost all of its emigrants go to Russia.

Tajik officials and some security experts say they fear the country's deteriorating economic situation could prove to be fertile ground for extremism.

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon warned in March of a rise in terrorist attacks by Tajiks abroad, saying 24 civilians had carried out attacks in 10 countries over the past three years.

Security analysts have linked Tajik ISIS-K militants to deadly attacks at home as well as in Turkey, Iran, the United States and Europe.

Ricardo Valle, director of research at Khorasan Diary, a non-partisan center that reports on militancy in the region, says it is "just a matter of time" before a large-scale attack takes place on Tajik soil.

The Croc attacks were "a watershed moment for the Tajik supporters of Islamic State," he told Reuters. "They now know they are capable of such attacks."

This year, Tajikistan expanded a campaign that saw thousands of officials go door-to-door across the country to educate about the dangers of recruitment by terrorists, one of the largest and most public initiatives of its kind. .

In Khatlon, a southern region bordering Afghanistan, state workers visited about 213,000 families between January and November — nearly all families — officials said this month.

"The number of young people joining religious extremist groups in our province is very high," regional chief Dawaltali Said told reporters in August, without giving further details.

Back at the family farm, which is in Khatlon, Yousfi is wondering what to do.

He has no shortage of work there, tending to livestock and vegetable gardens. But his parents' house needs repairs, and he knows he'll never make as much money doing odd jobs around the village as he could in Russia.

He is considering signing up for the army. At least there he could earn a steady salary, he said.

"I will serve a year and come back, and then I can think about getting married."