Over 13 million foreigners visit Russia in 2011

More than 13.6 million foreigners visited Russia in 2011, the bulk of them were from the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), according to head of Russia’s Federal Migration Service Konstantin Romodanovsky. “In 2011, a total of 13,676,000 people came to Russia,” he said. About a third of them, in his words, come to Russia for a period less than w week, the rest are mostly labour migrants. According to Romodanovsky, slightly less than 80 percent of foreigners, who visited Russia in 2011, were citizens of the CIS countries. According to official statistics from the Federal Migration Service, currently there are 9.3 million foreigners in Russia.