Russia adds 3,000 names a day to a list of people banned from entering the country, the head of the Federal Migration Service said in an interview Monday.
The bans are mainly for violating migration legislation and mean that more than 285,000 people are currently prohibited from visiting Russia, Konstantin Romodanovsky told Kommersant.
He did not specify what term these bans are for, although Russian law mandates a three year ban for repeated migration offenses.
"The number of people on whom we place a ban correlates with the number of logged violations of migration legislation committed by migrants living in Russia," Romodanovsky said. According to migration officials, 11.3 million foreigners entered Russia in the first six months of the year, including 3 million who work illegally.
Russian law enforcement agencies seem keen to reassure the Russian public that they are taking a tougher line on migration after recent outbursts of inter-ethnic violence in Moscow.
On Oct. 13, an angry mob in the Moscow suburb of Biryulyovo targeted businesses that employ Central Asian migrants after a local man was fatally stabbed and initial police reports indicated the assailant was a migrant. However, while popular sentiment remains staunchly hostile to large-scale migration, the government is acutely aware that migrant labor is vital to the economy.
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