Over the past decade the former Soviet zone turned into one of the major human migration regions in the world. The amount of remittances sent home by labor migrants grew significantly in the 2000s and peaked in 2008. Labor migration became a potential major force for integration among the former Soviet republics. However, official state responses were weak, as both sending and receiving states failed to cooperate on migration issues, neglected the benefits of migration and complicated the lives of migrants. Labor migration is treated as a political issue in Central Asia, with recipient countries - mainly Russia and Kazakhstan - using migrants to exert pressure on migrant-sending countries. Meanwhile, Uzbekistan, a major sending country, routinely blocks the discussion of labor migration issue at regional meetings. Russia and Kazakhstan have benefited from migration inflows but lacked any motivation to create more favorable conditions for incoming migrants. Remittances surged in 2006-2007, when the construction sector boomed both in Russia and Kazakhstan. Remittances to Tajikistan, for instance, increased from $1.7 billion in 2007 to $2.7 billion in 2008. In the meantime, although migrant remittances constitute a considerable share of sender country GDP, these money insertions do not contribute to local development, instead resulting in real estate bubbles and rising food prices. The long rise was followed by an abrupt decline in early 2009. Analysts therefore, shifted from examining the causes, implications, and scope of migration to focus on the economic and social consequences for recipient countries when migrants return home. To a great extent, the migrants' abrupt return was the only major manifestation of the current global economic crisis to affect Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the leading migrant-sending countries. This paper focuses on labor migration to and from the five Central Asian states and Russia. It begins with a description of the major tre