registration
Alina Israeli
aisrael at AMERICAN.EDU
Sat Jun 16 11:56:59 UTC 2007
Sounds like a police state (with busy work for employment).
On Jun 16, 2007, at 4:47 AM, Michele A. Berdy wrote:
> My general sense is that it's easier for an American to get a
> Russian visa than for a Russian to get an American visa, although
> there are exceptions to that rule. But my cry from the heart has to
> do with registration, with Russians don't have to do in America,
> and which has become an enormous headache for foreigners in Russia.
>
> Now you have to register when you arrive, get a card and carry it
> around. If you leave the city for more than 3 days, four days
> before your departure you have inform your company, bring back the
> card and "de-register" and then register wherever you go. If it's a
> hotel, they'll do it for you -- and they now have to register you
> and "de-register" you when you leave. (This is a huge amount of
> work for them; in the past they just put a stamp on your visa, but
> now they have to do two runs to the Federation Migration Service
> for every tourist.) But if you are visiting friends at their
> apartment or dacha, the first day you arrive you have to go to the
> FMS and register, and the day before you leave you have to return
> to "de-register." (I can't imagine that it's a 5-minute process
> either day.) Then when you get back to Moscow, you have to re-
> register. My employers don't know what I should do if I leave the
> city for a five-day road trip and don't stay more than a night in
> any one place. They think I wouldn't "de-register" in Moscow, but
> then that defeats the whole purpose of this, if the purpose is
> indeed to know where we all are. In fact, in the past the
> registration was at my place of residence, and now we are all
> registered at the office of our company. (That's what the internet
> visa guys do, too.) So the FMS is getting less information on where
> we are. According to the records, hundreds if not thousands of
> people are sleeping on the floor of offices.
>
> You don't get a stamp anymore so you have no way of proving that
> you have complied with all this. So in my company several people
> who registered and de-registered on time have been stopped at
> passport control because the computer system didn't show it. The
> same thing happens with tourists. They are fined -- usually $100.
> According to hotels, the tourists get hysterical and then want to
> sue them. But everyone was in complete compliance -- the problem is
> that the FMS doesn't have time to put the information in the
> computer system so that the border guards get it on time.
>
> Actually, this is all hearsay. I need to get registered under this
> new system, but my employer tells me that their guy at the FMS
> refuses to take their paperwork. He told them "I'm sick of you" and
> "I don't have time to do all this work." I don't doubt it. It
> isn't onerous for a company bringing in construction workers or for
> anyone who arrives and pretty much stays in one place or stays in
> hotels. But for a newspaper with dozens of correspondents traveling
> all over the place, or any company with a lot of movement of staff
> and visitors, this is just nuts. And nuts for the guys at FMS
> trying to keep up with the paperwork.
>
>
Alina Israeli
LFS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington DC. 20016
(202) 885-2387
fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu
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