Introduction

During a visit to New York in January of 2006 I was invited to a banquet party by a Kyrgyz acquaintance I had recently met. I didn’t know what to expect as I entered an imposing two-storey building through heavy doors that were gallantly opened by a uniformed doorman. I found myself in a spacious high-ceilinged foyer with a grand staircase, faux marble columns, crystal chandeliers, and reproduction gold accents. As I ascended the staircase to enter the dining hall where the party was held, I saw a few guests leaving their coats with a coat check manned by a restaurant employee in uniform. I checked my coat in as well and entered a grand dining hall featuring stylized interior design, live band, large dance floor, and tables set with fine linens and beautiful china. The tables were arranged in three long rows and were piled high with plates of delectable appetizers: five different types of salads, caviar served on thin slices of buttered French bread, and crystal vases with various exotic fruits. Guests were filing in, all beautifully dressed: women wore party gowns and were stunning in their expensive gold jewelry; men wore well-tailored suits and highly shined patentleather shoes. Although I knew that this was a party to celebrate a Kyrgyz irregular migrant’s son’s first birthday, an unsuspecting observer would have never guessed that the women at this banquet who were dressed in formal evening gowns, high heels, with professionally styled hair and fresh manicures could be the same women who rise before dawn to clean houses and take care of other people’s children for a living; or that the men dressed in chic suits and Italian shoes are unskilled construction workers who often toil long hours in miserable conditions. This book is about those nannies, cleaning ladies, construction workers, caretakers of the elderly and restaurant workers from the former Soviet Union who were forced to leave their homelands to seek opportunities in the United States because the economies at home deteriorated severely in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Migrants interviewed in this book came from various countries in Central Asia1 and the Caucasus – Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Georgia – that extend along the southern border of Russia from the Black Sea to China. It is through their eyes that we will see a

republics who travel over 6,000 miles, often paying thousands of dollars for their passage to the United States, to take up menial jobs in a multibillion dollar service industry. The novelty of this type of migration3 lies in the fact that migrants from the former Soviet Union are highly educated, and often have graduate and postgraduate degrees and years of professional experience. In comparison, typical labor migrants to the United States, who usually arrive from Central and South America, are significantly less educated: 28 percent do not have a high-school education and over 50 percent have only eight or fewer years of primary education (The Economist 2006). Three-quarters of migrants interviewed for this book had university degrees and included former medical doctors, college professors, professional athletes and business owners who now perform unskilled low-wage jobs in the informal economy of the United States that have traditionally been filled by lesser-educated migrants from Latin America. The demand for unskilled and semi-skilled workers in the United States is insatiable, only slightly dampened by a recent economic downturn. It is estimated that the US economy needs approximately 460,0004 additional unskilled workers on an annual basis in industries such as agriculture, construction, domestic services, and restaurants and hospitality. As native-born American workers attain higher levels of education, they are reluctant to take jobs in these sectors, which often pay below the minimum wage, have long unregulated work hours, offer no benefits, and are physically strenuous; thus it is migrant workers who increasingly fill these jobs. In the domestic-service industry, for example, female immigrant workers have replaced African-American women who traditionally performed paid housework and who have since moved into the formal economy with somewhat better wages, regulated work hours and, sometimes, health benefits. Since the 1970s, as more American women have joined the labor force, the demand for childcare services has exponentially increased. Yet, there is a substantial shortage of good quality, affordable childcare in the United States. The demand for formal childcare that provides learning opportunities for children far outstrips the supply, and that which does exist is often either unaffordable or unavailable or of unsatisfactory quality. Many middle-class families are deeply prejudiced against formal childcare centers, “perceiving them as offering cold, institutionalized, and second-class child care” (Hondagneu-Sotelo 200: 4). Children attending formal childcare centers also tend to get sick more often, forcing parents to miss work. As a result, many parents turn to informal childcare,5 much of which is provided by female migrant workers. Similarly, the responsibility of caring for the elderly and the ageing babyboomers is being increasingly transferred from the immediate family members to hired workers who are often migrants (Pratt 1999). The capacity of public assistance programs for the elderly is limited: federally funded healthcare covers only acute health conditions requiring skilled medical assistance (Bass and Noelker 1987). Many elderly individuals do not want to live in nursing homes or

medical assistance on a daily basis, which disqualifies them for federally subsidized programs, but they do need help with personal care. In such cases the only in-home care options for the elderly are limited to daily assistance from family members (if it is available) or to privately purchased care or a combination of both. Traditionally, the families provided the bulk of care for elderly individuals with disabilities (Bass and Noelker 1987). Purchased care is becoming a more attractive option for primary caregivers given the significant physical and emotional care-related stress, and the availability of inexpensive migrant labor. It is estimated that half of the disabled elderly using in-home services relies exclusively on privately purchased care (Bass and Noelker 1987). Much of such care is purchased from female migrant workers – one-third of the female migrants interviewed for this book reported working as live-in caregivers to the elderly. Migrant workers willing to provide elderly care relieve the burden of the immediate family members. Since the responsibility of caring for the elderly is disproportionately borne by women (Ettner 1996; Bass and Noelker 1987), migrant labor in this sphere allows more American women to fully participate in the formal labor force. The demand for unskilled migrant workers is also very significant in sectors such as agriculture and construction. Agriculture, in particular, depends heavily on migrant labor. Since 9/11 immigration rules have tightened and border apprehension and deportation activities have intensified, putting new strains on the already shrinking seasonal labor force. Fruit and vegetable growers around the country have suffered from reduced revenues and lost harvests simply because they cannot find enough pickers. California pear farmers alone lost an estimated $10 million in one season due to the unpicked harvest in 2006. As the New York Times reported, “300 growers representing every major agricultural state rallied on the front lawn of the Capitol carrying baskets of fruit to express their ire” in September 2006 (Preston 2006). Despite such a significant demand for unskilled labor in the United States, legal channels for unskilled migration are very limited and the process is cumbersome for both potential employers and employees. As a result, almost all migration into the United States for low-skilled labor takes place through irregular channels. It is therefore not surprising that highly educated migrants from the former Soviet states, willing to perform unskilled work in the United States, resort to irregular migration channels in the absence of legal ones. Their more fortunate compatriots with fluent English whose skills are in demand in the American labor market (such as scientists, high-tech professionals, and academics) are able to migrate legally by obtaining employment visas and permanent residence permits (“green cards”). However, the lesser skilled migrants or those whose skills are not easily transferable to the Western labor market, often migrate illegally and pay thousands of dollars for their passage, only to take up physically demanding, low-wage jobs in the informal economy of the United States in order to support the families they left behind. While their skills might be comparable to those of legal migrants, highly educated migrants end up in

have an illegal immigration status, or simply do not have the information on how to transfer their skills and education into white-collar work in the United States. Immigration is an acute and sensitive issue on the political, social, and economic agendas of the United States and Europe. It has been the subject of heated debates in the United States, rendering the country drastically divided on this issue. Proponents of immigration equate it to the civil rights issue (Bernstein 2006a), while opponents cite the alleged burden of illegal immigration on public services, such as education, Medicare, Medicaid and other public-welfare programs.6 The 109th United States Congress (2005-2006) aggressively took up immigration reform and produced several legislative proposals (Rosenblum 2006). One of the bills, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, was largely anti-immigrant and embodied an “enforcement – only” approach. The introduction of this bill was met with unprecedented nationwide objection. In Los Angeles alone, over half a million immigrants marched on one day in March of 2006 to protest the then-impending bill that would make an irregular migrant7 present in the country a felon and would make providing social or any other type of assistance to undocumented migrants a federal crime (Bernstein 2006a). The bill was passed by the House but was eventually “shelved” and unable to get through the Senate. The 110th Congress (2007-2008) made immigration reform one of the top priorities on its legislative agenda. President George W. Bush urged the legislators to support comprehensive immigration reform in his annual State of the Union address in January 2007 (New York Times 2007). A new comprehensive immigration reform bill, the STRIVE Act of 2007 (Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy), was introduced by Representatives Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) on 22 March 2007. The proposed bill would provide a path to legalization and eventual citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants, and it would create a guest worker program with an annual cap of 400,000 workers. In addition, the bill proposed to increase the H1-B visa cap for highly skilled foreign workers from the current 65,000 per year to 180,000 and would exempt highly skilled foreign nationals with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics granted by US universities from the H1-B visa cap.8 Opponents of the bill fervently argued it was in effect an amnesty for illegal immigrants and vehemently opposed its passage. As a result of such critics’ nationwide efforts, Congress voted to end the debate on the proposed immigration legislation and effectively “killed”9 the bill in June 2007 (Pear and Hulse 2007). No new immigration legislation was passed during the remainder of the George W. Bush presidency (2004-2008). In general, the United States has strict immigration policies and has been enforcing existing measures and introducing new ones to curb illegal migration into the country. Despite this, the number of irregular migrants from various countries has not decreased and seems only to be increasing – by 2005, it was an

control policies of the United States been unsuccessful? Why is the immigration policy in crisis? This book argues that informal institutions involved in migration processes, such as migrant-smuggling networks, can explain much of the immigration crisis. Among numerous factors influencing the effectiveness of public policies,10 the existence and efficacy of informal institutions might have significant explanatory power. The outcomes of formal institutional policies can be undermined, or in contrast, be complemented, by informal institutions. It is obvious that formal rules designed to control migration flows into the United States are being undermined by informal institutions such as migrant trafficking networks. However, the extent of the involvement of informal institutions in the process of migration and the exact nature of the interaction between informal and formal institutions involved in migration remains uncharted territory. This research project was designed to examine the role of informal institutions in the process of migration from the former Soviet Union – with a particular focus on Central Asia and Georgia – to the United States for low-wage labor. More specifically, using Kyrgyzstan as an example of a sending country, this book illuminates how formal and informal institutions interact in the process of migration, and how informal institutions influence the effectiveness of immigration and immigration-related policies of the United States. This book is based on in-depth interviews with 48 migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus living and working in the United States. The main theoretical focus of the study is on the interaction of formal and informal institutions in migration, examined through the case of labor migration from Kyrgyzstan to the United States. Accordingly, I provide a comprehensive picture of migration from Kyrgyzstan to the United States starting with what takes place in the country of origin and ending with migrants’ integration in the destination country. Such a detailed account is drawn from in-depth interviews with 33 migrants from Kyrgyzstan who live in the United States, interviews with policy makers, Kyrgyz and American consular officials, representatives of non-governmental organizations and international organizations in Kyrgyzstan, as well as the review of the migration laws of Kyrgyzstan and the United States. The case of Kyrgyz labor migration is certainly not unique in the post-Soviet space. According to the World Bank, the countries of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) can be grouped into northern and southern states according to their demographic trends. Northern FSU, comprising the Slavic states, Moldova and the Baltic countries, are characterized by low fertility as well as a declining and ageing population (Mansoor and Quillin 2006). In contrast, southern FSU states, which include Central Asia and the Caucasus, have high birth rates above replacement level and a younger population. Countries in this group have collectively tripled in size between 1950 and 2000, from 25 million to 72 million persons. The population of the southern FSU is projected to reach 93 million by 2050 (Mansoor and Quillin 2006). Therefore, it is particularly instructive, from an analytical perspective, to examine the case of Kyrgyzstan and a few other select countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus in the larger context of south-

economies growing too slowly to supply jobs to the swelling labor force, and a persistent lack of economic opportunities. Combined, these factors present strong preconditions for migration. Consequently, in addition to migrants from Kyrgyzstan, I interviewed 15 migrants from Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan in the United States to provide a comparative perspective of post-Soviet migrants’ migration and integration into the American labor market. It is relevant that these selected countries do not have well-established diasporas in the United States, and thus are quite comparable to most post-Soviet sending countries in terms of migrant reception and integration.11 Such a perspective helps put the Kyrgyz case into the broader context of labor migration from southern FSU states to the United States and allows for a juxtaposition of the experience of Kyrgyz migrants with that of other post-Soviet groups that share a common historical legacy and have comparable demographic trends. Partially due to globalization and the end of the Cold War, former Soviet citizens are on the move as never before. Millions of individuals from poorer former Soviet countries migrate to richer Western states in an effort to provide for themselves and their families both through legal channels, and in their absence, through illegal ones. While legal temporary migration and permanent immigration from the former Soviet republics to the US for permanent residency is not a new phenomenon, there is a new trend of temporary (and mostly illegal) labor migration from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)12 to the United States that has emerged in the last decade. There are typically two categories of labor migrants from the FSU: highly educated individuals with fluent English whose skills are in demand in the American labor market, and who can thus officially obtain US work visas; and unskilled (or with skills not in demand in the US) labor migrants who are either smuggled into the country or work illegally on tourist or other types of visas. Such illegal labor migrants are primarily employed in unskilled low-wage jobs such as domestic service, caregiving to children and the elderly, as well as in construction and sweatshops, despite the fact that many are highly educated. This book focuses on the latter group of migrants because due to the lack or non-transferability of their skills and professional training into the formal American labor market, or because of insufficient English skills, or both, there are practically no legal channels of migration available for these groups of prospective migrants. Consequently, they are more likely to use informal channels of migration, and as a result, mostly end up working in low-wage unskilled positions in the informal economy of the United States. This situation results in the dramatic under-employment and “deskillization” of a large group of migrants from the FSU as their education and experience are not utilized at all. For example, a former neurosurgeon from Kyrgyzstan currently works in construction in Philadelphia; three other former medical doctors and three college professors from Central Asia work as live-in domestic workers in New York. Moreover, this population has been largely absent from studies of migration

being absent from policy considerations. To date, there are only a few studies of low-wage labor migration for unskilled labor within the CIS, and most of those are published in Russian.13 At this juncture, the only English-language empirical research of post-Soviet labor migration to the West is an ethnographic study of Russian-speaking migrants and immigrants in London and Amsterdam (Kopnina 2005). The lack of representation of this stratum of migrants in scholarly research persists despite the fact that this group is much more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse due to their undocumented status. They often do not know their rights and do not have access to medical services while working abroad. As the International Organization for Migration reports,

99 percent of labour migration in the Eurasian Economic Union formed of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, and Belarus is irregular. Due to their irregular situation, most labour migrants do not benefit from the same protection rights other regular citizens enjoy and are thus more vulnerable to exploitation by underground employers.