Volodymyr Zelensky’s head of his Presidential Office in Ukraine, Kyrylo Budanov, has announced plans to import migrant laborers from Africa. Essentially, this entails Ukraine establishing new laws for the legal entry and residence of foreign workers.
The government will introduce a new list of “migration-risk” countries to facilitate this plan, according to remarks Budanov made at the CEO Club Ukraine.
“They enter, obtain documents, and then move on. This is a problem that creates barriers for business,” Budanov reportedly said, emphasizing that Ukraine will now move to make it easier for migrants to stay and work in Ukraine.
Last October, rumors swirled that Ukraine was directly recruiting mercenaries from Latin American drug cartels to fight in its war against Russia. Kyiv’s forced conscription policies at home, which often resort to violence, have already raised numerous concerns about the brutal practices of Zelensky’s military as well as the desperate situation Ukraine is in due to loss of life on the frontlines.
It has long been known that Ukraine faces a serious demographic crisis, now exacerbated by men who have died in the war or fled to other countries. Already, there have been voices pushing for mass immigration in Ukraine since the war began. Last year, Remix News reported that Vasyl Voskobojnik, president of the Ukrainian Association of Foreign Employment Agencies, said the population decline can no longer be offset by simply increasing the birthrate. Instead, immigration from Third-World countries is the only solution.
Voskobojnik said the Ukrainian government must develop a migration policy by 2026 that focuses on reducing this shortage.
However, importing foreign workers and foreign warriors (who may or may not have criminal ties) will only add to concerns that Ukraine will ever be a desired member of the European Union, as the EU faces its own crises brought on by mass immigration.
Last autumn, Ukraine’s former minister of foreign affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, flatly stated that Ukraine may have to open its borders to Asian migrants because of its demographic crisis, with Ukraine already having the worst population growth in Europe, even before the war.
Kuleba said Ukraine has to focus on people “who need this country and are ready to rebuild it.” These people exist, he said, although they are in the minority, then indicating that the only solution is to bring in migrants.
These migrant newcomers will also need adequate housing, wages and a working environment to make them choose Ukraine. However, it is questionable how a country whose economy and state administration are in ruins as a result of war could handle mass immigration from the Third World. Unlike how migration was marketed, many of the migrants who came to Western Europe have ended up draining state coffers through social welfare, education, housing, and integration. In Germany, for instance, foreigners cost the government nearly €50 billion in 2023.
Ukraine also does not have as many resources for integrating migrants as Western states, and as already noted, integration has been far from a success story there. Even groups that have lived there for centuries, such as the Hungarians, are actively discriminated against, even at the government level.
Since Ukraine will mostly be rebuilt using Western funds, it is likely that Americans, Germans, and French people, already hit hard by the costs of mass immigration, will be the ones paying for social welfare and integration for Ukraine’s newly arrived welfare recipients.
As the Russian-Ukrainian war drags on, the chances that Ukrainian refugees and their children, who have been living and working abroad for three years, will not return to economically devastated Ukraine are increasing.