Tajikistan also raised the cost of a 12-month work permit that employers must buy. A permit for a labourer from the CIS now costs 110 US Dollars, and for a labourer from further afield, 230 US Dollars. Employers who hire stateless or other foreign labour without necessary permission are liable to fines ranging from 20 to 1,000 times their rate of pay.427 Stateless persons in northern Tajikistan told UNHCR that their employers had shifted the cost of the permit to them – 1,050 Somoni428 – and docked it from their wages. In 2004 Kazakhstan became a net importer of labour. Its efforts to meet its own labour shortage and to regulate its immigrant work-force have had an impact across the region, including on stateless persons.429 From 2004-2006, Kazakhstan experienced labour shortages in its agricultural, industrial, educational and health sectors.430 It is still analysing the wave of migrant labour that responded to this shortage and making some amendments to its legislation in the light of it. Han Chinese comprised the largest group of registered immigrant workers in those years.431 There was also an exponential rise in non-contractual, unregistered labour immigration. In southern Kazakhstan, for instance, between March and November of each year, between 30,000 and 70,000 unregistered labour migrants reportedly arrived for seasonal agricultural work, peaking at harvest-time in September-October. According to an independent Sociological Research Centre based in Chymkent, most seasonal farm workers are Uzbeks, crossing the 784-kilometer open border with Kazakhstan, and include stateless persons. Significantly fewer come from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.432 The impact of labour migration on stateless persons in Kazakhstan has not been studied. The Chymkent research centre maintains that from 2004, national law enforcement agencies attempted to control it by administrative means and force, detaining and expeling migrants who were working without permission. Around 14,000 were expeled each month.433 Owing to a shortage of customised holding centres, stateless persons and suspected illegal migrants were placed in remand prisons alongside criminal suspects434 before being expeled. Policy makers in Kazakhstan were divided about labour migration, according to the research centre. Authorities and law enforcement agencies in south-Kazakhstan favoured a change in the law that would make it simpler for Kazakh employers to recruit foreign labour and license it. It found widespread detention and expulsion to be ineffective and inappropriate. For one thing, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are part of an agreement on visa-free travel with Kazakhstan435 and most migrants arrive in the country legally. In the light of global economic recession, Kazakhstan has scaled down its annual quota for foreign labour. Government Instruction No 1197 of 22 December 2008 reduces the quotas previously set for seasonal agricultural labour in border areas for the period 2008-2010, from 2.4% of the total 427 Article 138, 2009 Administrative Code of Tajikistan. Approximately 235 US Dollars according to 30 April 2011 exchange rates. 429 Elena Y. Sadovskaya, Migration in Kazakhstan on the Threshold of the 21st century: An Analytical Overview for the ILO in the Russian Federation, Almaty-Moscow, 2005; Serik Aidossev, Expert Member of the Presidential Human Rights Commission of Kazakhstan, ‘Integration of Economic Migrants from Central Asian Countries into Kazakhstan’s Labour Market, Avoiding Intolerance and Discrimination’, Paper to the 13th Economic Forum, Prague 23-27 May 2005. 430 Elena Y. Sadovskaya, Migration in Kazakhstan on the Threshold of the 21st century: An Analytical Overview for the ILO in the Russian Federation, Almaty-Moscow, 2005. 431 5,000 had work contracts mostly in Almaty and Astana. Elena Y. Sadovskaya, Chinese Migration to Kazakhstan: Silk Road for Cooperation or Thorny Road of Prejudice, The China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 4, CaucasusCentral Asia Institute, Johns Hopkins University, November 2007. 432 Cited in a presentation by Serik Aidossev, Expert Member of the Presidential Human Rights Commission of Kazakhstan, ‘Integration of Economic Migrants from Central Asian Countries into Kazakhstan’s Labour Market, Avoiding Intolerance and Discrimination’, 13 Economic Forum, Prague, 23 May 2005. 433 UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Kazakhstan: Focus on New Immigration Law, 6 January 2004, available on http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=22690. 434 Ibid. 435 The Bishkek Accord signed in October 1992 with five other CIS states. Turkmenistan was also a signatory but left in 1999 and concluded a bi-lateral agreement with Kazakhstan in 2003. 428 ~ 66 ~