The Ministry of Internal Affairs proposes to prohibit illegal migrants from driving a car and obtaining a license

The Ministry of Internal Affairs has prepared a bill that proposes to introduce a regime of controlled stay for illegal migrants. It is expected that they will not be able to obtain a driver’s license, drive a car or transfer money, TASS reports, citing the document.

According to it, controlled stay is a legal regime applied to foreigners “who do not have legal grounds for stay (residence) in the Russian Federation or who have provided deliberately false information or documents when carrying out migration registration.” The foreigner will be in this regime from the day his data is entered into the appropriate register. The grounds for this may be the expiration of the temporary stay, temporary residence permit, residence permit, or illegal border crossing, or the revocation of his visa, refugee status or temporary asylum, or citizenship.

Among the restrictions provided for such persons:

• ban on state registration of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs;
• a ban on the purchase or alienation of real estate, vehicles and self-propelled machines;
• a ban on registering real estate with the state cadastral register;
• ban on state registration of vehicles;
• restriction in driving a car;
• the possibility of refusal of admission to take driving tests and replacement of a driver’s license;
• the possibility of refusal to open bank accounts, transfer money, or enter into marriage.

Within the framework of the developed law, these persons are required to report on their location, change of place of stay, date, place and route of planned departure from Russia. If they violate them, they can be deported or placed in a special facility. They also have the right to request the grounds for applying this legal regime to them, and to appeal against the actions or inactions of officials.

The Prosecutor General’s Office reported that by the end of 2022 was tagged a 10% increase in the crime rate among migrants, the largest increase in the number of such cases was recorded in the Urals – 465%. Number of migrants deported from the country increased 2.5 times. Head of the Human Rights Council Valery Fadeev called for establish quotas for migrant workers. Ministry of Internal Affairs offered introduce fines for migrants living in the country for a low “language rating”, and give them tax breaks for good knowledge of the Russian language.

Laura Keffer