Speaking at St. Petersburg conference “Problems and risks of migration in Russia: protection of the rights of labor migrants, foreign citizens and stateless persons” executive director of the Khujand Human Rights Center Azalkhon Alimov said that in January-February this year 253 citizens of Sughd province of Tajikistan were denied entry to Russia.
“At the same time migrants have no idea of such decisions. He travels back to Tajikistan and when decides to go back to Russia he is told at the border that he is denied entry to Russia. In airports migrants receive the so called certificate of return, where in accordance with Article 27 of the Law on Entry to and exit from Russian Federation, it is written that he is an undesirable person in Russia. But the reason always remains unclear,” Alimov said.
He noted that Tajik migrants faced this problem in several airports in Russia. “From the discussion with these migrants we realized that many of them committed administrative offences – some forgot to leave the country on time, some forgot to pay fines. However, none of them were neither deported nor expelled from the country. Even the law specifies limited terms of stay or another administrative punishment for such violations. However, we are concerned with the fact that such migrants become undesirable persons. It would be much more clear if the problem was in some political or social aspects, but we don’t understand situation when ordinary labor migrants who travel to Russia to earn money for his family become undesirable persons,” he said.
He also said that the law does not specify any period of time during which undesirable persons are banned to enter the country. “We sent an official request to Russian Federal Migration Service and Russian Border Control Service on behalf of Tajik citizens but still waiting for their reply,” Alimov said.
He also said that sometimes people who were expelled from Russia for a period of 5 years not always removed from the list of “undesirable persons” when this period is over. “We know cases when our migrants who were banned to enter Russia for a period of five years were refused entry after the end of this period. We used to settle such issues through personal requests on each specific case,” Alimov has said.
