Yeugeny Nikolaichuk
Russia again declares war against illegal migration. The initiative came from the center: according to the general staff of the Interior Ministry of Russia, in mid August the capital police established departments on investigation of crimes connected with organization of illegal migration. More than 70 police officers will work in Moscow on this direction.
The capital law-enforcement agencies were forced to make this decision by the growth of the number of crimes committed by illegal migrants. In late July the head of the Moscow state department of the Interior Ministry, Anatoly Yakunin, stated that more than a half of investigated crimes in Moscow were committed by migrants since the beginning of the year. According to the Moscow police head, every seventh murder and every third raping in the capital is committed by migrants from the CIS. The horrible statistics demand bold means: to fight not only against crimes committed by illegal migrants, but also illegal migration itself and those who support it.
Previously a special department on ethnic criminal groups dealt with these problems. The law-enforcement agencies at first received information on a crime, then arrested an alleged criminal, and only after that it appeared that he lives in the capital or the country illegally. Now it is planned to fight illegal migrants-criminals by preventive measures: not letting them get into the territory of the capital.
The logic is simple: the less illegal migrants, the less crimes will be committed. But how will it work? Experts have no optimism toward effectiveness of a new structure. At least, it won’t get rid of illegal migrants absolutely. To do so, deep reasons for the problem should be understood. Why do people become illegal migrants? It should be analyzed, people who organize it should be detected, and certain solutions for the state migration policy should be proposed.
The problem of illegal migration lies not within the law-enforcement sphere. There is an opinion that working of a new department will lead only to new loots of migrants by the police. Officials got used to consider migration as unavoidable evil and migrants as potential criminals. But it is not so. The majority of migrants come to Russia to earn money and support their family at home. Illegal migration is a consequence of a huge bureaucratic migration machine when it is simpler to buy “legalization” from speculators than camp on the doorstep of the FMS and its numerous offices.
