Becoming a Russian citizen through special military operation: foreigners hunted to the front, big rush of Tatarstan residents in migration service
Colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tatarstan Marat Galeev — about mistakes in passports and employees who got into criminal cases
The July increase in the duty on a foreign passport by only 1 thousand rubles turned into an unplanned full house in the migration service. Those wishing to issue a new document in the first half of 2024 turned out to be by almost 17 thousand more than in the first six months of last year. It is impossible to issue such a number of documents at once, the head of the Migration Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tatarstan, Marat Galeev, acknowledged the appearance of queues. At the briefing on 10 July, he told what specifically helps to find “werewolves” among migrants, how the new programme changed the gender in the documents of a Tatarstan citizen, and why foreigners leave for the special military operation. Read the details in the material of Realnoe Vremya.
A system failure closes the border
Five residents of Tatarstan suffered from the new software for issuing passports — their documents were printed with errors. One had his gender changed — they indicated “w” instead of “m”, the other was given the wrong place of birth. The result was disrupted vacations and business trips — armed with new standards, the border service refused to let those leaving with incorrect passports through.
This fact was announced at a briefing for journalists by Colonel Marat Galeev, the head of the Migration Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tatarstan. He called the incident a “technical glitch” and reported: “In all cases where the passport is incorrectly printed, we correct the errors as soon as possible without charging additional cost.”
At the same time, the head of the migration service called on all recipients of documents to carefully check them upon issuance. After all, it is better to do this in the office and immediately fix the error than to find out about the problem already at the border.
By the way, 106 thousand people received passports in Tatarstan in the first half of the year alone. For comparison, in 2023, on the same date, there were 89 thousand of them. Migration service inspectors were not pleased with such a sharp surge. “This creates certain inconveniences. The staff, which has management today, does not allow to issue a large number of passports at once. This is the reason for the increase in queue," the head of the department noted.
To the question of Realnoe Vremya what caused such a surge in those wishing to leave far away Galeev explained: traditionally, during the holiday season, there is an increase in requests for new documents, but this year the situation has been aggravated by an increase in state duty. On July 1, the price of registration of a foreign passport with an electronic carrier rose from 5 to 6 thousand rubles, so many people wanted to “get in the last car”.
The nuance is that this increase was announced at the end of November 2023, when amendments to the Tax Code of the Russian Federation were adopted. And those planning trips had the opportunity to worry about new documents ahead of time. The colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs urged this on 10 July, and at the same time, also reminded about alternative options for registration of foreign passports — through Gosuslugi and the offices of the Multifunctional Public Services Centres.
MVD Colonel about ideological migrant contractors
By the way, according to the Department of Internal Affairs, this year more foreign passports have been issued in Tatarstan than domestic ones, by as much as 14,500.
724 foreigners living in Tatarstan received passports of Russian citizens. There are 97 men of military age among them. “Information about them is sent to the Military Commissariat so that they can register for military service," said Marat Galeev.
After that, he revealed a shorter way to obtain a Russian passport — a contract with the Ministry of Defenсe of the Russian Federation. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 23 foreign contract citizens have left Tatarstan for their military service this year.
“Everyone has a different motive," explained the head of the Department of Internal Affairs. “Someone really wants to get citizenship for themselves and their family members, someone goes for the purpose of obtaining material benefits, and someone — for the idea... The peoples of the near abroad maintain close relations with Russia. What our fathers and grandfathers were brought up on, these principles remained there.
According to Galeev, the procedure for obtaining citizenship for such contractors is being simplified. The issue can be resolved within a month. If there are no difficulties with the paperwork.
“Not all foreign citizens come with documents," the colonel stated. “There are discrepancies in the spelling of the data in the birth certificate and the national passport. To make sure that this is the right citizen, we have to make inquiries. And the time frame may increase...
Why do they take fingerprints from visitors
Migrants are also in demand on the labour front, especially on construction sites. The BRICS summit of heads of state is ahead, and there are not enough workers to build hotels, roads and other facilities. At the moment, 97 thousand visitors from other countries are registered for migration in Tatarstan. Of these, less than a quarter have a residence permit or a temporary residence permit, and the remaining 77 thousand are registered as temporarily staying in the territory. Moreover, in terms of the number of these “temporary workers”, Tatarstan is second only to Moscow with the Moscow region and St. Petersburg with Leningrad Oblast.
More than a third of foreigners come from Uzbekistan (36.6%), one in five —from Tajikistan (20.2%), and one in twelve — from Kyrgyzstan (8.6%).
823 of the arrived people have issued work permits, most of them are residents of China and Turkmenistan. One of their main employers is Alabuga Special Economic Zone.
At the same time, over 31 thousand labour patents have been issued in Tatarstan, the highest figure in the Volga Federal District. Two thirds of the patents were granted to visitors from Azerbaijan (21.3 thousand), slightly less than a third to citizens of Tajikistan (9.5 thousand).
At the same time, almost half of foreigners with patents are registered in Kazan (14.8 thousand), followed by Naberezhnye Chelny (6 thousand) and Nizhnekamsk (4 thousand) in the top three.
Since the beginning of this year, more than 2 thousand foreigners have been expelled from the Russian Federation for violating the conditions of stay, and 59 people have been deported due to the lack of legal grounds for staying in our country. Almost 3 thousand foreigners received the status of persona non grata — they were banned from travelling to Russia.
According to Marat Galeev, in practice, employees of the migration service have to deal with cunning foreigners who rush to our country, despite the established entry bans.
“They change the installation data in the documents and come back to us. But we identify such people anyway, because we have a mechanism for mandatory fingerprinting for all migrants," he says.
“We have a lot of conscientious employees”
Answering a question from Realnoe Vremya's journalist, Marat Galeev noted: the legality of the decisions of his subordinates is under the close control of other bodies. The migration officers are checked by the internal security service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Investigative Committee, and the Prosecutor's Office on a regular basis.
“I want to say that the number of violations of our employees does not exceed the same indicator of violations in other law enforcement agencies," said the head of the department. “We have a lot of conscientious employees — almost all of them, most of them are women with children.
At the same time, the colonel did not hide the fact that today four employees, including his subordinates, are being prosecuted for crimes in areas “in contact with migration”. Galeev did not share the details: “We are not talking about bribes, but about the violation of legality in the preparation of documents”.
The head of the Department of Internal Affairs reported on crimes in the ranks of migrants with a reservation. Every fact of illegal actions of a foreigner has a resonance and is sometimes inflated in social networks in such a way that it pulls on another crime — inciting ethnic hatred.
“Despite the increase in the number of foreigners, they do not have any noticeable impact on the criminal situation in the republic," says Marat Galeev.
According to him, 350 crimes committed by foreign citizens have been investigated in Tatarstan this year. Including 127 thefts, compared to the same period in 2023, there were by almost 42% more of them. But crimes in the field of drug trafficking, on the contrary, decreased by 27% — 44 facts were registered.
There are 36 episodes of forgery in the third place in the criminal rating, their level has increased by only a couple of percent compared to last year. While the “road” crime of foreigners showed an increase of 38%, two dozen gross violations of traffic rules by citizens of other countries received the status of criminal cases.
In addition, migrants have three murders and one kidnapping on their account.
However, this year 207 foreigners themselves became victims of crimes in our republic. More than 80 people suffered from fraud, 74 from theft, nine from robberies.