Even the most cursory glance at recent Ukrainian social media posts will reveal a perfect storm around the “threat of mass immigration” by workers from South Asia. The background to this sense of panic may be various statements by Ukrainian officials about the country’s short-term need for hundreds of thousands of migrant workers and moves towards introducing a law to simplify visa processes for these individuals.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. The justification for such plans seems clear enough: so many lives lost, so many men of working age in the army, or focused on war-related production, and hundreds of thousands of people whose battle injuries restrict the kinds of work they can do. Then there are the internal fugitives. According to official figures, approximately two million Ukrainians are currently hiding from the army. While they remain shut up in their apartments or houses, the government is stepping up the fight against them, discussing freezing some of their bank accounts and blocking their driver’s licenses. But these internal fugitives usually receive support from family and friends, and the number is not decreasing. Obviously, to survive, Ukraine’s economy needs a labor force, and using migrant workers is an obvious way forward. The question is how to communicate with the public about this. Unfortunately, perceptions of the issue have been formed, not by sober official statements, but by talk in the mass media and social media that seems designed to convince Ukrainians that hundreds of thousands of migrants have already arrived and settled in the country.