On October 1, the State Duma (Russia’s lower chamber of parliament) will begin reviewing five legislative initiatives aimed at tightening migration policies, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin announced on his Telegram channel at the end of last week.

Lawmakers are proposing the following measures:

• Recognize the commission of a crime by an illegally residing migrant in Russia as an aggravating circumstance for sentencing.
• Classify the organization of illegal migration by an organized group as a particularly serious crime, with penalties including imprisonment for 8 to 15 years or fines ranging from 3 million to 5 million rubles.
• Introduce stricter penalties for forging, producing, or circulating fake documents, as well as crimes related to fictitious registration and placement of foreign nationals on record. Penalties will include imprisonment from 2 to 6 years; for legal entities, fines from 5 million rubles to 10 million rubles with confiscation of property (for repeat offenses, fines will range from 10 million to 60 million rubles with confiscation of property).
• Introduce extrajudicial blocking of websites that offer illegal services to migrants or sell fake documents for obtaining migration status.
• Prohibit intermediary organizations from participating in the process of administering exams to migrants.

Mr. Volodin, citing data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, noted that 4,573 cases of document forgery among migrants were identified in the first eight months of this year.

"All of these initiatives should help restore order in the migration policy sphere," he concluded.

After the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, for which citizens of Tajikistan are accused, Russian lawmakers introduced several legislative initiatives aimed at tightening migration laws and restricting migrants' rights in Russia.  Some proposals included banning migrants from bringing their families to Russia, restricting couriers earning more than 100,000 rubles, prohibiting those who recently acquired Russian citizenship from purchasing non-lethal weapons, and requiring migrants to prepay return tickets.

Additionally, the State Duma passed a bill that allows for the revocation of acquired Russian citizenship for refusal to register for military service.