The law "On Citizenship of the Russian Federation" itself does not cause particular complaints among officials. But few people know that every foreigner who wants to obtain a Russian passport first encounters a completely different law - "On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation," adopted in 2002. And, according to lawyers, it is this normative act that gave rise to another wave of illegal migration. Although in the everyday sense, victims of imperfect legal regulation are difficult to call illegal migrants.
"It is impossible to follow all the points of this law," said Svetlana Gannushkina, leader of the "Civil Assistance" movement. "It simply needs to be rewritten. And one should start by introducing a temporary identity document for immigrants. So far this does not exist. As a result, people who want to obtain a temporary residence permit on completely legal grounds are being sent around in circles. And as a result, corruption and illegal migration grow."
It is worth noting that human rights activists are also agreed with in the Federal Migration Service. "The law is simply imperfect," a high-ranking employee of the immigration control department told journalists on condition of anonymity. "Starting with the fact that it is impossible to register at the place of stay within the three days allotted for this. In the best case, under favorable circumstances, it takes 10 days. Therefore, a meeting of the FMS working group on introducing amendments to the law "On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation" was held recently. These proposals are not final and require some further refinement. Only when the work is completely finished will the bill go to the State Duma."
True, the essence of the amendments was never disclosed in the migration service. But it was noted that, in addition to the excessive set of documents for an ordinary immigrant, they are also dissatisfied with the quota system for temporary residence permits introduced by the law. For different regions of Russia, these are different figures, which are established by law based on the demographic needs of the region. By the way, human rights activists are also extremely dissatisfied with the quotas.
"Quotas for temporary residence are complete absurdity," said Svetlana Gannushkina. "They are approved by the government upon the application of heads of local administrations. But there are no substantiated methods for what these quotas should be. So, a governor can request either five thousand places or zero. And virtually no motivation is required from him. As a result, people become illegal migrants against their will."
Outside the quota
And it is precisely quotas that passport officers justify themselves with, refusing to accept documents for temporary residence even from people born in the RSFSR and now living in other CIS countries. As Stanislav Anishchenko, a correspondent for "Novye Izvestia" in the Volgograd Region, reports, regional public organizations dealing with the protection of the rights of resettlers, as well as the office of the human rights ombudsman in the region, are flooded with complaints about the work of the region's passport and visa services. Resettlers, the vast majority of whom were born in Russia but lived outside it for various reasons, cannot obtain documents even for temporary residence in their historical homeland. By unreasonably refusing to accept documents, passport and visa service employees, according to human rights activists, increase the already considerable number of illegal migrants. Passport officers, in turn, cite low quotas for accepting resettlers.
For the Volgograd Region, the quota for 2005 was 1,500 permits. This turned out to be insufficient, since it was already exhausted at the end of spring, but the flow of "returnees" did not weaken. Moreover, no one even thought to notify those who were just planning to move to the region that the quota had ended. "As a result, people arrive in the Volgograd Region, and the passport and visa services immediately tell them that documents for issuing temporary residence permits are not accepted," explained the human rights ombudsman in the region, Mikhail Tarantsov. "In other cases, documents are still accepted, the new arrival is registered at the place of stay, and after the 30 days established by law, the person is told that the quota has run out, advising them to return "from where they came." He is no longer able to return - there is no money. Thus, the number of illegal migrants in the region increases by one more person. Moreover, the vast majority of these "illegal migrants" do not fall under the quota and have legal grounds to live on the territory of Russia."
The categories "not falling under the quota" include, for example, citizens born in Russia; families reuniting; disabled people who are not citizens of the Russian Federation, if their children, citizens of Russia, live in the Russian Federation.
The last category of "quota beneficiaries" includes 73-year-old Vyacheslav Furov, who, together with his wife, moved to his homeland in the Leninsky district of the Volgograd Region from Ukraine, where he had lived since 1970. "No one can explain to me why I cannot obtain citizenship?" the resettler wonders. "Without citizenship, they don't pay me a pension either. I was born in Russia, grew up in Russia, and worked in Russia. Not of my own free will - I was sent by an enterprise - I moved to Ukraine. I have 53 years of work experience! Now I have returned to my homeland, and they tell me that I will receive a pension here in the best case in about five years!"
Offshore for immigrants
St. Petersburg has long held the proud title of the immigrant Mecca of the CIS. This is due to the acute demographic crisis in the Northern capital. Since the 1990s, the population here has decreased by a million people, and there is an acute shortage of labor and mid-level managers. Unlike Moscow and the Moscow Region, which have long been fighting illegal migrants, St. Petersburg remains an open city. Some townspeople and residents of the region have made registering migrants at home a profitable business.
But if the PVS has no questions for migrant workers, then there are somehow plenty of complaints about 'foreigners' born in Russia. 'It's not that they are being nitpicked at the PVS, it's the law that is practically impossible to comply with,' said Arkady Kramarev, head of the Legislative Assembly's commission on legality and public order. 'There are known cases when parents are granted citizenship but their child is not, because he was born, say, in Bishkek or Tashkent.'
According to Arkady Kramarev, it is just as difficult for those born in Russia to obtain Russian citizenship as for foreigners. 'I believe that we should always and everywhere protect our own people, and the law should give preferences to this category of people,' says the deputy, 'but Russia's citizenship laws are oriented toward migrant workers and refugees. But what, for example, about the military servicemen who found themselves in Ukraine or Kazakhstan during the dissolution of the USSR, that is not specified. So they are tossed around from one authority to another. It happens that permission to obtain Russian citizenship issued by our consulate somewhere in Central Asia is refused to be accepted here. A person automatically turns into an illegal migrant. Meanwhile, 70% of the population of Abkhazia has managed to obtain Russian passports.'
The head of the commission is convinced that this is a nationwide problem that must be addressed at the state level. Until the impossible requirements of the citizenship law are abolished, thousands of native-born Russians will remain illegal aliens. 'For example, to go through the procedure here, you need to provide a certificate from your place of study. If many countries can provide such documents, then Uzbekistan, which even in Soviet times did not want to comply with all-union requirements, will never issue such a paper,' says Kramarev. 'Or how, for instance, is a person supposed to prove that he was not a citizen of Uzbekistan? There is no documentary form that confirms a negative fact. There are no certificates testifying that it never happened. This is absurd.'
However, there are regions where quotas are several times higher than the average in Russia. For example, almost no one from the CIS comes to Vladivostok for permanent residence. Not surprisingly: local residents themselves are fleeing the region. Every year, 10,000-13,000 people leave the southernmost Far Eastern region for other regions of the country.