All news

Sobyanin urges migrants who come to Moscow to live by its rules

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin believes that migrants who come to live in Moscow should abide by its rules

MOSCOW, October 14 (Itar-Tass) — Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin believes that migrants who come to live in Moscow should abide by its rules.

“They simply have to live by the rules of a city they come to live in. Then, there will be no room for conflicts,” Sobyanin told the Postscriptum program on the TV-Center channel on Saturday.

“Representatives of over 120 nationalities reside in Moscow, and there’s nothing bad in it. But it’s really bad when someone who comes to live in Moscow starts behaving himself in a way he would have never behaved even back at home,” Sobyanin said.

He urged law enforcers, the government and national diasporas should be calling people to order because no one, except for those who like chaos, are going to benefit from this split along ethnic lines.

The mayor admitted that sometimes internal migrants created more problems than foreigners. “We can deport any person who comes from Tajikistan or Uzbekistan and who doesn’t behave himself to his or her home country, and that’s it,” he said.

The mayor paid special attention to illegal migration from foreign countries. “I think that Moscow has an equal number of legal and illegal migrants. Illegal migration is the root cause behind a considerable number of crimes. It’s not just some kind of anti-social behavior but real crime: robberies, murders, rapes, etc,” Sobyanin went on to say.

He believes that all migrants should be legalized.

“This year we’ve joined efforts with the prosecutor’s office, the prefectures and the police. The number of illegal migrants deported from Moscow has gone up by a third,” Sobyanin said.

Speaking about Moscow’s expansion and a territory which is not called “new” Moscow, the mayor said that the Moscow authorities had no plans to turn it into a mega-city.

The idea was to preserve the territory as it is with parks and large green areas when a decision to expand Moscow was made.

“Densely built-up areas are expected to appear on a territory between the Butovo and Solntsevo districts,” Sobyanin went on to say.

“Moscow is surrounded by huge neighborhoods built with 25-storied apartment buildings which don’t have social amenities or transport infrastructure. But the most terrible thing is that there are no jobs,” the Moscow mayor emphasized.

“People residing there are forced to head for Moscow in search of jobs, and this creates a transport collapse which we see,” Sobyanin went on to say.

“That is why we want to implement a different project at least in this part of Moscow. First, there will be no densely built-up areas; second, the territory behind the town of Troitsk will be turned into a recreation area. We will create housing and jobs simultaneously so that to make this project interesting to Muscovites who will get new housing; for businessmen who will create new jobs and for all Muscovites who will have a nice place for recreation,” Sobyanin stressed.