RIGA, August 10. /TASS/. Latvia requires €17 million to fortify the state border with Russia not to allow illegal migrants, the country’s Interior Minister Rihards Kozlovskis said on Monday.
"We actually already have a project, and the work under it has begun this year," he said. "The term is four years and the necessary financing is €17 million."
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He said in an interview with Latvian television the money is necessary to organize a border zone not to allow illegal immigrants.
It is more reasonable for Latvia, he said, to invest money in a better and more expensive border than to be sending out at its own expense those aspiring shelter in the country.
Latvia’s border service reports detention of 239 illegal migrants in 2015. Most of them - 165 - are citizens of Vietnam and another 20 come from Afghanistan.
For those people Latvia is a transit country on the way to the European Union’s other states.