Criminal liability for migration fraud: national and international law

Abstract

One of the key principles of the national foreign policy is to ensure Ukraine’s integration into the European political, economic, and legal space with the aim of gaining membership in the European Union. For this purpose, the authorities in our country ratified international treaties and adopted a number of laws, which, both in the pre-war period and during martial law, significantly reduced the level of offenses in the field of human trafficking, since millions of Ukrainians have been abroad since the beginning of the war, and together with the temporary protection, refugees gained access to the labor market in European countries. At the current stage of state formation, migration has become an element of the movement of people in many countries of the world, since migration policy in European countries is an important factor in ensuring the national security of the states of the European Union and migration processes require constant and proper control by state authorities. In the context of the strengthening of civil society institutions in Ukraine as a democratic, social, legal state, the study of the issues of legislative protection of human and citizen rights and freedoms in Ukraine, among which the right to freedom of movement occupies a special place. And the number one issue is irregular migration, which is a choice between security and ghostly earnings. Labor migration is a quick and popular way to earn a significant amount of money, but this easy availability of earnings has another side - fraud, which is a very widespread phenomenon in the labor migration market and it starts with offers of illegal employment abroad, and sometimes ends with real labor slavery. There are problematic situations of silencing cases of discrimination abroad, because it is connected with insufficient awareness of our compatriots about their rights and the mechanisms for their protection, because when they find themselves in such situations, people do not know where to turn for help or are afraid of losing their jobs, because most of them are labor-related by migrants and spreading negative information about them by employers can lead to job loss. It is possible to outline several groups of risks regarding persons who are potentially more prone to falling into fraudulent schemes. First, people who agree to leave illegally to work abroad because the promise of a higher salary works, because the employer does not pay taxes for the employee.