Russia not facing flood of Syrian refugees - Romodanovsky
MOSCOW. Sept 9 (Interfax) - Russia will not be flooded by Syrian refugees, not being their transit point, Russian Federal Migration Service (FMS) chief Konstantin Romodanovsky told Interfax on Wednesday.
"I see no major influx of Syrian refugees into Russia, neither today, nor tomorrow," he said.
"Overall, Russia does not look attractive to refugees from Middle Eastern countries. Normally, people go where it would be easier for them to integrate, with the help of large diasporas. Historically, they have already trod their path into Europe a long, long time ago. Equally important is the language aspect: Russia is complicated for them, but many can speak English, at least, at the basic level," the FMS chief said.
"As for talks of an increased influx of Syrian refugees, as well as our efficient border service we also have the so-called barrier consisting of a number of states, which for us is a 'safety cushion' of sorts," Romodanovsky said.
Since the beginning of 2015, over 7,500 Syrians have entered Russia and as many left, including 182 people through the Borisoglebsk checkpoint in the Murmansk Region on the border with Norway, he said.
"We analyzed our system data. It turns out that each one of these people stayed in Russia for more than 255 days. To say that Russia is being used as a transit point would be incorrect, to say the least," Romodanovsky said.
On September 4 his deputy Nikolai Smorodin told Interfax that 2,000 Syrian refugees had been granted temporary asylum in Russia since the armed conflict began in that country. He said that the reports about masses of Syrians being denied an opportunity to remain in Russia were untrue.
"Today, there are around 12,000 Syrians in Russia, which is 0.1% of all foreigners staying in Russia. Of these, 2,000 people were granted temporary asylum, 2,666 were formally allowed to reside here temporarily, and 2,029 obtained a residence permit. Nearly 5,000 have registered themselves with the migration authorities," Smorodin said.
"We are not working in the format of evaluative perception of events, we operate exact figures; thankfully, our information resources make it possible. There was no toughening of the Russian FMS stance on the granting of asylum to Syrian citizens in the Russian Federation. Asylum is granted to Syrians in view of the situation in their country, on which the FMS is being constantly updated by the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry," Smorodin said.
He thereby dismissed the allegations by Civil Assistance campaigners that the FMS has been denying temporary asylum to Syrian refugees.
According to the migration service, normally Russian asylum applications are received from those who are married to Russian citizens who returned to their home country after the armed conflict began in Syria.
FMS chief Konstantin Romodanovsky told Interfax last week that the FMS is monitoring the situation to prevent an influx of illegal migrants from Europe into Russia.
"We are taking active measures also to prevent illegal migrants currently in Europe from entering our country. We believe that most of them could arrive through our western border, mainly through Belarus. This is why we are cooperating with Belarusian colleagues. This is helped by the Union State international migration agreements," Romodanovsky said.
Russia and Belarus are planning to ratify an agreement on mutual recognition and enforcement of decisions to deny entry to the two countries, the chief migration officer said.