After controversy, the State Duma adopted a bill on simplified admission to Russian citizenship
Today, the State Duma adopted a bill on simplified admission to Russian citizenship, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The bill abolishes the requirement to renounce the citizenship of a foreign state for all categories of applicants for Russian citizenship living in Russia, and also eliminates the condition of a three-year period of residence in the Russian Federation and confirmation of the means of subsistence for those foreign citizens who acquire Russian citizenship in a simplified manner.
In addition, the mandatory period of labor activity in the Russian Federation before filing an application for admission to Russian citizenship is being reduced from 3 years to 1 year for persons who received professional education in the Russian Federation after July 1, 2002.
The bill also grants the right to submit an application for Russian citizenship in a simplified manner to citizens of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Ukraine permanently residing in the Russian Federation; for such applicants the conditions for a continuous period of residence in the country and confirmation of the availability of means of subsistence are excluded.
However, during the consideration of the bill, several amendments did not make it into the final version.
“We rejected the amendment of deputies Emelyanov and Nilov, who proposed to extend the waiver of the requirement to renounce foreign citizenship in order to obtain Russian citizenship proposed in the bill only to citizens of Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Moldova living in our country. – State Duma deputy Konstantin Zatulin noted during the presentation of the bill. “I understand the concern of respected deputies, who apparently fear that many labor migrants from other countries will want to take advantage of this provision to obtain citizenship.”
“But by fighting this, we will throw out the baby with the bathwater, show injustice to many Russians and Russian-speaking people from other CIS and Baltic countries, and block the return of Volga Germans and other interested categories of compatriots to Russia. We have quite enough different kinds of control weights in order to regulate and prevent unwanted distortions when it comes to admission to Russian citizenship,” the deputy explained.
“The committee, by a majority vote, rejected three amendments introduced by me together with deputies Kalashnikov and Taisaev. We wanted to single out compatriots from among all foreigners, and only give them the right, without relocating to Russia, to take advantage of the simplified opportunity to obtain Russian citizenship proposed in the bill.
Because the Russian state, by and large, is in debt to its people for the waves of emigration and the sudden collapse of the USSR in the 1999th century. Because we promised this to our compatriots in the law “On State Policy towards Compatriots Abroad,” adopted in XNUMX. And, most importantly, because this gesture would allow us to mobilize our diaspora and make it truly the third, after the army and navy, a true ally of Russia in the world,” Zatulin added.
However, the deputy emphasized that the rejected amendments are a matter of the future, and promised to continue to strive for their inclusion.
“We will continue to strive for this, but we cannot because of this delay the adoption of the bill, which, I repeat, is awaited, especially in the current situation, by those already in Russia, among us, applicants for Russian citizenship,” Zatulin emphasized.
The deputy also appealed to the president and the government with a request to remove the issues of extending the terms of temporary residence permits, residence permits and other legal documents that expire during the period of quarantine measures due to the coronavirus pandemic.
After which the deputies supported the document in the second and third readings. According to the voting results, the bill was finally adopted with 314 votes in favor and 1 abstention.
As PolitNavigator reported, a bill amending the Russian Tax Code regarding the exemption of residents of the DPR and LPR from state fees for accepting Russian citizenship was also adopted today in three readings.
The State Duma has adopted a bill on simplified admission to Russian citizenship after controversy.