DUSHANBE, June 20, Asia-Plus – Police in Russia”s Urals region are using an airship to hunt for illegal workers from ex-Soviet states, the state channel Vesti-24 said on Wednesday.
The TV channel ran video footage of an airship hovering over private cottages in the Perm region and showed police on horseback tracking illegal migrants.
Impoverished laborers from ex-Soviet countries stream to Russia, seeking to support their families back home with modest wages earned in the booming oil-fueled economy.
Russia”s immigration authorities put the number of illegal workers at least five million, though they concede it is hard to be certain how accurate this is.
“Now there”s no escape from this all-seeing eye,” television said. It said the unmanned airship hanging over the fringes of the regional capital Perm was equipped with a video camera able to identify a face from a distance of 5 km (3 miles).
The video showed a group of migrants, identified by a policeman as from Tajikistan, building a private house.
“Literally, just an hour after this cat-and-mouse game, police and migration officers detained some 70 illegal migrants. Some of them are sure to be expelled from Russia,” Vesti-24 said.
