Nearly 240,000 foreigners live in Belarus. Almost half of foreign workers in the country come from Turkmenistan. Last year, 4,860 foreigners were expelled from Belarus. This was stated by head of the Interior Ministry’s Department for Citizenship and Migration Ivan Novikau in an interview with the Interior Ministry newspaper Na Strazhe.
“At present, more than 70,000 foreigners who have received temporary residence permits and around 168,000 people permanently residing in Belarus are registered with the internal affairs bodies”, he said.
According to him, more than 24,000 foreigners had their temporary and permanent residence permits revoked last year.
“For serious violations of the law, a decision was made to expel 4,860 people from the country (compared with 5,512 in 2024), while 3,885 people were denied entry (compared with 3,382 in 2024). Based on materials from the internal affairs bodies and petitions from state agencies, 7,806 people from other countries were banned from entering the republic”, Novikau added.
More than 48,000 labour migrants worked in Belarus last year. They were employed by more than 9,000 employers.
“The majority of foreigners arriving for work are citizens of Turkmenistan (23,050, or 48%), Russia (4,677, or 10%), Ukraine (4,389, or 9%), Uzbekistan (3,618, or 7.5%) and China (3,438, or 7%)”, the department head said.
