The Interior Ministry reports on oversight of migration flows in 2025

According to the Interior Ministry, compared with 2024, the number of unscheduled inspections conducted by migration officials of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs increased by 11.3%. The effectiveness of these measures also improved: 13.3% more violations of migration legislation were detected. The total number of offenses in the field of migration that were curbed also increased by 8.5%, exceeding 1 million.

Foreign nationals were most often held administratively liable for violating the rules for entering Russia and the rules governing their stay. These results were achieved thanks to the introduction of a whole range of innovations, including an experiment to collect biometric data from foreign nationals arriving in Russia, as well as measures aimed at digitizing migration processes. In 2025, police officers were empowered to independently decide to expel violators of migration legislation from Russia and place them in special facilities for temporary detention pending deportation from the country. In total, approximately 60 thousand people were subject to these measures.

In 2025, both the number of temporary residence permits and residence permits issued to foreign nationals and the number of foreign nationals admitted to citizenship of the Russian Federation fell by almost a third.

Overall, the measures taken have helped strengthen the trend toward reducing the shadow employment of foreign nationals and the illegal use of foreign workers. Thanks to the launch of a register of persons subject to monitoring, as well as preventive measures, the number of people complying with labor migration legislation has increased: notifications of employment or civil-law contracts with migrants working under a patent rose by 25.9%, while work permits rose by 44.5%. At the same time, the number of non-working foreign nationals in the country has declined: minors by 24.5%, and women by 7.6%. The total number of foreign nationals fell by 8.6% to 5.7 million people.

Author - Alla Shelyapina