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■ Закинyто сюда Sergey Serebryakov (2:450/160.911)
■ Аpия  : RU.ANTIVIZA (FodoNet EchoMail From X-Files System)
■ От    : Alexander Netuzhilov, 2:5020/175.2 (Tuesday October 21 2003 17:10)
■ Комy  : All
■ О чем : Visas's difficulties for foreigners in Russia
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From: "Alexander Netuzhilov" 

From the St.Petersburg Times again:

===cut===
#911, Friday, October 17, 2003

NEWS

Visa, Permit Snafus Blamed on Moscow
By Robin Munro
STAFF WRITER

St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast officials on Thursday blamed Moscow for
problems foreigners are having getting visas and work permits.
Speaking at a roundtable on visas and related matters for American Chamber of
Commerce members, the officials said they did not expect any quick
improvement.

The local bureaucrats declared the regulations - introduced sporadically since
a new law on foreigners came into force on Nov. 1 a year ago - to be flawed
and urged foreigners and their representatives to write complaints to federal
authorities.

"Unfortunately, a number of documents sent to Moscow get lost or stuck in the
system," said Antonina Chetverikova, head of department of external labor
migration for the oblast and city.

Applications for work permits are taking two or three months to process, she
added.

"If we don't hear anything from Moscow in two months, we send the papers
again."

Her directorate has an "unwritten agreement" that people inconvenienced by
such delays will not lose their right to live and work while their papers are
still being processed, she said.

"Even if Moscow wants to, it is incapable of processing those thousands of
permits," she said.

She added that a quota on foreign workers would be unlikely to restrict the
number of people working here - only about 10,000 work permits have been
issued in the last year, but the city allows 14,000. The oblast allows 7,000.

Chetverikova, who has worked under the Federal Migration Service since it was
founded in 1992, conceded that approval for foreigners to work in Russia is
largely a formality - she knew of only one final refusal in 10 years.

That obtaining permits is also easier for citizens of CIS countries than for
western investors is also wrong, particularly with the law on foreigners being
introduced partly to battle illegal migration, some of which comes from those
countries, she said.

The law will not be changed by lower level officials like herself, but only if
the clamor of complaints reaches the highest echelons, she added.

"We have to change the law and people in the Federal Migration Service have
some understanding about the inconveniences," she said.

"The Interior Ministry is organized like the military," she said.
"No one high
up will listen to us subordinates, but if embassies and organizations write
complaining that might work."

Mikhail Utyatsky, head of the city and oblast's passport and visa directorate,
said that the procedure for foreigners wanting to live and work here is for
them to arrive on a three-month single-entry visa and then to apply for a
one-year multi-entry visa.

The directorate had been working hard - of the approximately 200,000
foreigners registered in the region and oblast, some 56,000 were registered in
the last year, he insisted.

Another way of getting visa documents processed quickly was through the
commercial firm, Inostranets, he said.

Rachel Shackleton, general director of Concept training, development and
consultancy services, said it had taken her nine months to obtain a
multi-entry visa, partly because staff had not been following procedures. She
finally got the visa she wanted only because she paid a commercial firm to get
it for her.

Utyatsky said Shackleton was unlucky because she started in January.
Regulations that clarified procedures were finalized in June, he added.

Inna Bigotskaya, deputy head of the oblast's committee on external economic
relations, said that delays and other hindrances hurt foreign investors The
oblast government will do all it can to help those mired in the process.

Maxim Kalinin, chairman of the AmCham executive committee, said the chamber
will take up the officials' advice and write letters of complaint about the
problems.
===cut===

Alexander Netuzhilov, SPb, RUS

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