The Russian authorities have announced that they have expelled more than 80,000 migrants in 2024, twice as many as in 2023, against a backdrop of tougher migration policy after the Crocus attack near Moscow in March 2024.
The nationality of the deportees, who are generally banned from entering Russian territory for five years, is not specified. But the overwhelming majority of migrants in Russia come from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, with hundreds of thousands of nationals from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan traveling there each year to work.
After the attack on the Crocus, a concert hall in the suburbs of Moscow, where more than 140 people were killed in an attack claimed by the Islamic State organization, Tajik suspects were arrested and police raids against migrants stopped. multiplied.
Several Russian leaders have increased their anti-migrant declarations, with former President Dmitri Medvedev criticizing, for example, the creation of “ethnic enclaves”while several MPs proposed expelling migrants who do not speak Russian. In September, the Speaker of the Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, announced the examination of thirty-four laws to toughen migration policy, including the ban on family reunification, a list of prohibited professions and the introduction of a tax for migrants.
Russia, however, needs manpower for its economy, due to decades of demographic crisis, as well as men to fight in Ukraine and has facilitated access to nationality to attract migrants. But the latter are now obliged, according to a law signed by President Vladimir Putin, to register with the army under penalty of losing their Russian passport and being expelled. Some 10,000 of these naturalized Russians have joined the Russian forces on the front, according to figures given this summer by the Russian authorities.
