As the head of the migration and national relations department of the commissioner's office, Sergei Yagodin, told a correspondent, the vast majority of these calls (95%) concerned problems of registration, obtaining a residence permit, and Russian citizenship. “That is, the problems that arose after the adoption last year of the laws ‘On Citizenship of the Russian Federation’ and ‘On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation,’” Mr. Yagodin said.
Moreover, as it turned out, people who encountered the migration bureaucratic machine simply had nowhere else to call. “Despite the fact that contacting the internal affairs bodies is the first step toward legalization on Russian territory, people are afraid to show up there,” Sergei Yagodin remarked. “And they don’t know where to write or call. This means that both the Interior Ministry and the presidential administration units that should be doing this as part of their duties are falling short.”
Independent human rights activists also sharply criticized Russia’s migration policy on the eve of Refugee Day. “Based on the president’s statements, the state’s migration policy should be oriented toward comprehensive support for both existing and potential migrants,” said Mikhail Arutyunov, president of the International Human Rights Assembly. “Unfortunately, the migration service has ended up in the hands of the Interior Ministry. And police officers are not prepared by their mentality to perform these functions. Moreover, in the presidential administration, Viktor Ivanov is in charge of these matters. A year ago, a congress of migrants asked Vladimir Putin to remove him from this post as an incompetent person.”
Human rights activists propose reorienting migration policy toward encouraging and settling refugees and confirming Russian citizenship for all citizens of the former RSFSR, regardless of where they currently live and what passports they hold. Human rights activists also consider it necessary to repeal discriminatory measures against citizens of former Soviet republics living in Russia. Let us recall that
now they will have to obtain a residence permit on a general basis (without taking into account the duration of residence in Russia), and then “serve” a five-year term waiting for citizenship without privileges or concessions, on an equal basis with those who have just crossed the border. Although many former fellow citizens of the USSR, over the years of living in Russia, have managed to acquire families and property here. At the end of this year they will lose their main document - their old passport will become invalid, and they will not receive a new one, since
they will not be able to confirm their citizenship. “The technical procedure of passport exchange for most Russians has turned into an additional burden, during which one has to once again prove one’s right to citizenship of the Russian Federation,” the commissioner’s office emphasizes.