Argentina says no Russians arriving in 2022 have been issued passports

The government of Argentina said on Tuesday (21) that no Russian citizen who has come to the country in the past year has obtained an Argentine passport amid the investigation by the Justice Department into the thousands of pregnant Russian women who travel to the country to give birth and presumably obtain this document.

“No Russian citizen who came to Argentina last year has a passport,” said Argentine Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero.

The Argentine Justice Department is investigating whether a network was set up to anticipate the birth of children of Russian mothers in Argentina so that adults would have access to Argentine passports in record time.

The child born in Argentina is entitled to a passport, but the parents must initiate a legal process that “takes years,” Cafiero recalled.

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, 10,500 Russians have traveled to Argentina. In the last three months, there have been almost 6,000 Russians.

According to Argentina’s National Direction of Migration, the country does not require a tourist visa, and mothers can obtain second citizenship for their children.

The Argentine passport gives visa-free access to more than 170 countries and allows them to obtain a 10-year visa in the United States, where Russia faces sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine.

Migration also said 7,000 Russian women who entered the country to give birth are no longer in Argentina.

ONGOING INVESTIGATION

Investigators have identified the first line of the “criminal organization” that “profited from high-income Russian families, who paid from US$20,000 to US$35,000” to enter the country and assigned a hospital for the birth of their children, according to police sources.

The Justice Department is investigating whether this organization managed the parents’ registration and Argentine citizenship procedures in record time when the child became a naturalized Argentine citizen.

Cafiero explained that if any Russians obtained an Argentine passport in 2022, it would correspond to a procedure “before the war” in Ukraine.

With information from AFP