( Kommersant ) - Rosstat notes in a report on economic conditions in the regions that the number of migrants entering Russia in the first half of the year was almost twice the number as during the same period last year. The state statistics service notes that 117,300 more migrant workers entered Russian than left in the first half of this year, compared to 66,500 last year.
Marina Rakhmaninova, head of the migration department at Rosstat, noted that the method used to count immigration growth had changed. The number counted in the new report is of "long-term" migrants. Vladimir Mukomel, director of the Center for Ethnological and Regional Research, said that migration growth is "the tendency of the 2000s." Mukomel noted that the long-term migrants do not go to Moscow.
In Moscow and Moscow Region, migration changed little, with negative migration growth of 700 people in Moscow (21,100 this year vs. 21,800 last year) and positive growth of 2000 (30,000 to 32,000) in Moscow Region. Meanwhile, migration growth in the Volga Federal District was 9.3 times and in the Southern District 4.8 times. Stavropol Territory saw tenfold migration growth.
Nikita Mkrtchyan, senior member of the Institute of Demography at the Higher School of Economics, found fault with Rosstat's counting methods, saying that it is "counting the upper part of the iceberg," especially in Moscow. He estimated the growth of long-term immigration at 200,000-250,000 people per year. "We will only be able to understand what is going on after several year," he noted.