MOSCOW, August 5 (RIA Novosti) – Almost 1 million foreigners have been barred from travelling to Russia due to visa regime violations, the chief of the country’s Federal Migration Service (FMS) said Tuesday.
“As of now, over 900,000 foreign nationals have been banned from entering Russia. I believe this measure to be effective,” FMS head Konstantin Romodanovsky told journalists.
Romodanovsky said the number of foreigners working in Russia lawfully had grown by 40 percent, while the number of overstays and other travel regime violations had fallen by 25 percent.
“There have been fewer illegal entries in Russia because they realize now that violations will be discovered automatically,” the chief of the migration authority added, referring to the state's computerized system of migration control that blacklists trespassers.
The statement came amid a series of raids on illegal migrants in Moscow’s four central railway stations that serve as a gateway to migration predominantly from Central Asia and former Soviet republics.
According to FMS officials, at least 25 percent of more than 360 foreigners stopped and checked at the Kursky, Kazansky, Yaroslavsky and Paveletsky railway stations so far did not have valid travel permits.
