MOSCOW, September 30 (RIA Novosti) – Russian Migration Service officials on Monday detained 20 illegal migrant workers at a construction site in northeast Moscow and 13 more at a market in the city’s south, the service told RIA Novosti.
“Out of 20 nationals from former Soviet republics involved in construction and finishing work, none was able to produce a work permit,” the migration service said, adding that the workers’ employer was being determined.
The service said regarding 13 others that “nationals of Ukraine, Moldova, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan” who “sold fruit, vegetables and dairy products” at a southern Moscow market knew that they needed to have work permits but disregarded the regulation.
Police have conducted a series of sweeps and mass checks of markets and other locations with large concentrations of immigrant workers in recent months, after a policeman was injured by a mob at a Moscow market while trying to detain a man suspected of rape at the end of July.
Economic growth driven by revenues from oil exports and a dwindling domestic labor force have attracted millions of labor migrants, many of them the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Some 11.3 million foreigners entered Russia this year, of whom 3 million work illegally, the Federal Migration Service said in late July.
