Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has named migrants from Eurasian Economic Union countries as one of the city's problems, the Interfax news agency reported Monday.
"This is a huge flow of immigrants, which, unfortunately, doesn't add to the city's safety," Sobyanin said at a meeting on crime prevention.
The mayor singled out migrants from Kyrgyzstan, saying that they do not pay taxes and live in unsanitary conditions in industrial zones. He also promised that city authorities were working on ways to address the problem, which would involve police working with volunteer neighborhood watch organizations in order to identify and deal with illegal immigration in the city.
Read about what life is like for migrant workers in Moscow.
"Cleaning out the city will not only temporarily improve the situation, but it will also have a positive effect in the long term," Sobyanin said.
According to the mayor, 40 percent of Moscow's migrants are working illegally. Every year the city issues 400,000 work patents for migrant workers at a cost of 12 billion rubles ($184 million). Sobyanin also said that Moscow has significantly decreased the number of illegal immigration cases.
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