Security forces cannot solve problems relating to integration of migrants

The National Policy Strategy through to 2025, as well as the efforts of government bodies and civil society institutions, has a key role in preventing national and religious extremism in Russia. According to Vladimir Volokh, professor at the Institute of Public Administration and Law of the State University of Management, both the Strategy and the Concept of the State Migration Policy have been implemented for more than five years. "Thanks to the implementation of the migration policy, we have the migration registration of all foreign citizens and stateless persons in the Russian Federation. There was no such thing before," Volokh said.

The expert considers the migration policy in the context of the national policy. He also took note of the significant changes in labor migration, which were adopted through appropriate changes in the current legal framework: "These are both issues related to the economic management of labor migration and to the transfer of a number of powers from the federal to the regional level. Of course, this is a positive thing.

According to Volokh, concerted efforts had been made by the authorities in preventing illegal migration: "If you look at the statistics for 2017, the number of crimes committed by foreign citizens has decreased. Now it does not exceed 2% of the total number of crimes committed on the territory of the Russian Federation."

Volokh recalled that Russia's Federal Migration Service (FMS) was abolished in April last year and its functions were transferred to the Ministry of Internal Affairs: "The Main Directorate for Migration Affairs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs conducts significant work, but a number of the FMS functions, such as management of study-related migration, internal migration, labor migration, issues related to granting political asylum, internal asylum, or recognizing refugee status, issues of adaptation and integration, economic migration, as well as demographic issues related to population migration, are not fully relevant to the work of the power structure. In this connection, there is a need to think about establishing an agency in Russia that would address national migration policy issues in an integrated manner, including all those functions that are not fully relevant to the work of the power structure, but at the same time would have an ability to manage the prevention of illegal migration."