With the Kazakh government preparing to relax regulations for migrant workers in the country on Feb. 1, migration into Kazakhstan will likely increase in the next few years due to immigration restrictions in Russia and skyrocketing populations in Central Asia. According to the World Bank, Kazakhstan is the ninth-largest immigration destination in the world and the seventh-largest source of emigrants. All of the Central Asian states have already surpassed the U.N. forecasts for population growth. For example, the United Nations predicted Kazakhstan's population would grow to 16.7 million by 2015; the population surpassed this number in 2011. Overall, Central Asia's population has doubled since 1980, straining each country's food, water, housing, job and financial resources. Moreover, the Central Asian economies have not grown together. For instance, Kazakhstan has vast oil and natural gas wealth, while Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have relatively few or no profitable hydrocarbon resources.
The combination of limited resources and increasing populations has left Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan with populations looking abroad for work and money. Remittances from workers abroad make up large parts of each of the three countries' gross domestic product — 48 percent for Tajikistan, 31 percent for Kyrgyzstan and 16.3 percent for Uzbekistan. Nearly all of the migrant workers from these Central Asian states work in either Kazakhstan or Russia. There are simply more and higher paying jobs in these two countries. Migrant workers are being paid 10-50 percent less than Russian or Kazakh citizens for the same low-level jobs, but that is still higher than what they would make at home. Increased flows of foreign workers will strain the Kazakh economy and could preclude some Kazakhs from competing with cheaper foreign labor. It will also increase animosity among the country's various ethnic groups at a time when ethnic tensions are already high in the region.
