RIA Novosti: No Need To Toughen Russian Immigration Law Despite Riots – Senior Official

Biryulyovo Riots file photo

(RIA Novosti – October 14, 2013) Russia’s immigration laws do not need to be tightened, the country’s top migration official said on 14 October, in the wake of protests and rioting sparked off by the killing in Moscow of an ethnic Russian, allegedly by an immigrant from the Caucasus.

Despite the unrest, Konstantin Romodanovskiy, head of Russia’s Federal Migration Service (FMS), said that existing legislation is tough enough for his officials to be able to do their work, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.

“The changes that have been adopted increase criminal liability, and already allow us to monitor the processes involved in the entry into Russia of even a large number of citizens from the CIS, such as we are seeing at present,” RIA Novosti quoted Romodanovskiy as saying.

According to the agency, he added that he “does not see the purpose” of tightening legislation, and the focus at the moment should be on “activating existing mechanisms and giving them the chance to work”.

Russian laws “need to be respected”

Romodanovskiy made the remarks while speaking to journalists following a round table with members of the upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council. According to the privately-owned Interfax news agency, Romodanovskiy said during the round table that, so far this year, the FMS has prohibited 275,000 foreigners from entering Russia, and has set itself a target of 400,000 by the end of the year.

“Since the start of the year, the flow of foreign citizens arriving in the Russian Federation has increased by 10 per cent. A ban on entering our country currently extends to 275,000 foreign foreigners. We plan to increase this number to 400,000 – that’s foreign citizens who are barred from entering Russia because of offences they have committed. Our mentality, and Russian laws, need to be respected,” Romodanovskiy said.

He added that there are currently 11.3 million citizens of other countries in Russia.

Police “deserve respect”

After the round table, journalists asked Romodanovskiy specifically about recent events in West Biryulevo, a southern suburb of Moscow where the killing of ethnic Russian Yegor Shcherbakov, allegedly by an immigrant from the Caucasus, sparked off protests that spilled over into rioting in which some 400 people were arrested, after which police launched a raid targeting migrants and made a further 1,200 arrests.

Romodanovskiy took issue with suggestions that the rioters genuinely felt they were being squeezed out of the job market by immigrants, RIA Novosti said. “I think there was an element of organization. And there is, without doubt, a risk that these events will be repeated,” he told journalists. “But if similar events are pre-empted, we will avoid such excesses.”

Romodanovskiy also took the opportunity to praise the police’s response to the rioting. “When something similar to Biryulevo happens in the West, the police response is tough and unlimited in nature. The action our police took was serious and deserves respect,” Interfax quoted him as saying.

“Notorious”

Speaking at a meeting at the Moscow mayor’s office, Olga Kirillova, the head of the FMS department for Moscow, said that, in the last few months, the agency had carried out two checks at the wholesale vegetable warehouse that was targeted by police cracking down on illegal immigration.

“In the south of Moscow, the situation developed and was monitored traditionally, as in Moscow’s other boroughs. I cannot say that this notorious facility was not checked. There were checks in September and in October,” Interfax quoted Kirillova as saying at the meeting.

Speaking at a separate news conference, Kirillova said that, so far in 2013, 13,500 people had been deported from Russia for breaking the country’s immigration laws, more than twice the figure for 2012.

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