The Russian Interior Ministry says almost 800,000 foreign nationals have been banned from entering the Russian Federation.
Kommersant on May 12 cited Mrs. Valentina Kazakova, the chief of the Interior Ministry Main Directorate for Migration Issues, as saying that 797,800 foreign nationals have restrictions on entry into the Russian Federation.
According to her, decisions on refusal of entry are made mainly by the Interior Ministry, but the Ministry of Justice and the Federal Penitentiary Service (they have 97,800 people from entering Russia), the Federal Security Service (88,800 people), Rospotrebnadzor and the Federal Medical-Biological Agency (34,900 people), the Federal Customs Service and Rosfinmonitoring (11,700 people) also participate in this process.
“The Interior Ministry accordingly plays a leading role. We ban entry to almost 70 percent, or 548,000 foreign nationals,” Mrs. Kazakova was cited as saying at the 11th St. Petersburg International Legal Forum.
The Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev said in March that the number of migrants deported from Russia last year increased more than 2.5 times compared to 2021.
Russia’s consulting company FinExpertiza noted in February this year that inflow of labor migrants into Russia increased last year by a third.
The inflow of labor migrants from Uzbekistan reportedly grew the most last year – by 377,700 people, or 35.1 percent. The number of labor migrants coming from Tajikistan reportedly also increased by a comparable amount – by 336,700 people, or 51.8 percent.
Outgoing labor migration from Tajikistan has started on a large scale soon after the fall of the Soviet Union. An absolute majority of the Tajik labor migrants have lived and worked in the Russian Federation. As a social phenomenon this migration has a profound impact not only on the lives of the individual migrants or the families who are being supported by a family member working abroad, but also on the Tajik society as a whole and the country’s economy.
