Queue for American visas near the consular section of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty obtained access to as-yet-unpublished 2017 statistics in accordance with a Freedom of Information Act request filed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). It is noted that the number of applications rose sharply after Russian President Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012.
The figure for 2017 exceeds the previous maximum according to USCIS data for post-Soviet Russia, published in 1994. At that time, 2,112 asylum applications were filed by Russians in the United States.
USCIS statistics do not indicate the reasons why people apply for asylum, although it is noted that to obtain it, one must demonstrate “persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution” in the home country “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Human rights activists and immigration lawyers believe that the increase in asylum applications from Russians in the United States is partly due to the law banning so-called “propaganda of homosexuality,” adopted in Russia in 2013.
As Radio Liberty notes, Canada and EU countries also recorded an increase in the number of asylum applications from Russian citizens. This was primarily due to the persecution of gays in Chechnya and other Caucasian republics, which began in 2017. According to EU migration statistics, Russians filed a total of 12,600 asylum applications in the 28 EU countries. Germany received 4,885 of them, and 90% of applicants who seek asylum in that country are ethnic Chechens fleeing the Kadyrov regime, says Olga Gulina of the Institute for Migration Policy in Berlin.