Illegal migrants play to the tune of ethnic mafia groupings

According to press reports, today some hostels and three-star hotels, for example, Sevastopol and Izmailovo in Moscow, have turned into havens for thousands of illegal immigrants from many Asian countries, including Sri Lanka.

Earlier, as soon as the "iron curtain," fencing off Russia from the "skills" of western world for a long time, was lifted after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the stream of illegal immigrants, flooding Western European countries, rushed pouring into Russia, escalating an increase in their number from year to year.

Police officials claim, now with Sri Lankan mafiosi jumping into the criminal business of transporting illegal immigrants, the number of people illegally living in Moscow has swelled to such an extent that even the police cannot estimate how many illegal ethnic nationals from Asian countries live in Moscow.

In Russia, illegal immigrants, they say, live in their special "underground habitats," ruled by their own laws. The existence of such underground habitats are the ideal breeding ground for criminal elements, bringing grist to the mill of Russian underworld.

In this connection, Immigration Group "Moscow," which carries out immigration control at Sheremetyevo-2 airport and local Immigration Service, have expressed apprehension that increasing number of illegal immigrants from Sri Lanka may arrive in Moscow in the immediate future.

According to them, already in the last six months, 2,000 immigrants from Sri Lanka arrived in Moscow, but none of them has left as yet. What is alarming for Moscow police in this regard is that often they use false documents.

For example, 27 Sri Lankans, apparently as students, arrived in Moscow from Colombo in October. Later it transpired after police investigation that the sponsoring institute had invited only one person for study; the rest of the group took a ride for Moscow just to give him company.

Whatever the excuse, all of them had in their possession invitations from the institutes, which after verification by police found to be false.

The increasing number of illegal Sri Lankans arriving in the Russian capital, they fear, will aggravate the crime situation, involving Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants, whose number is estimated at over one million. Chinese and Vietnamese mafiosi are reputed to do racketeering among their own ethnic people.

The criminalisation of illegal migration starts not when foreigners settle amongst their semi-assimilating countrymen and forced to look for jobs, which are, more often than not, illegal, according to the police. The transportation of illegal immigrants from Russia through clandestine means is immensely profitable. The criminal groupings which organise their transportation across Russia to Western Europe, receive the lion’s share of the income. According to the police, in most cases, they land in Moscow illegally on false documents and their underground living forces them to become "hostage" of mafiosi, possessing information about them. It is a well-known fact that ethnic criminals have been doing their illegal business in close link with their Russian counterparts, sharing their sphere of criminal activities with them, including underground migration.