Russia arrests illegal Vietnam immigrants

About 500 illegal immigrants from Vietnam were arrested at a village near Moscow where they were working in a garment factory, police said Thursday. The Vietnamese and their families were living on the factory grounds in the village of Malakhova, RIA Novosti reported. The factory makes coats and jackets. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin recently estimated about 2 million illegal immigrants are living in the capitol region, out of a total population of 15 million. The Federal Migration Service puts the total number of immigrants in the region at 340,000, about half of them illegal. Most of the migrants to Russia come from former Soviet republics in Central Asia.