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Some 10,500 pregnant Russians of more than 30 weeks entered Argentina in the last year, 5,819 of them in the last three months, to give birth, the government of the neighboring country reported this Friday, which suspects that they seek to access Argentine nationality in middle of the war in Ukraine.
Source: EFE
Since the conflict broke out, in February 2022, thousands of Russian women traveled to Argentina to give birth, because that country does not require a visa to enter and because mothers can obtain a second citizenship for the child -not so for them-.
Then, the Argentine passport provides access to 171 countries without a visa and allows you to obtain a ten-year visa to the United States.
“The problem is that they arrive, they have children, they write them down as Argentines, they leave a power of attorney and they never come back,” explained the director of Migrations for Argentina, Florencia Carignano, to the TN channel.
As stated, 7,000 of those Russian people who entered to give birth are no longer in Argentina.
Carignano confirmed that Justice is investigating “the gangs behind” the flow of pregnant women of that nationality that Argentina detected as of last August.
“They all come right at week 33”, hence “There is a pattern of behavior that Justice is investigating,” added Carignano, who explained that they are women with high purchasing power who declared that they visited Argentina with agencies that offered them tourist packages.
SIX RUSSIANS RETAINED
Last night alone, 33 pregnant Russian citizens arrived in Argentina, of which three were “inadmitted”, which, added to another three detected the day before, brought to six the number of women held at the Ezeiza International Airport, on the outskirts of the Argentine capital.
Of them, Carignano explained that they arrived alone, pregnant from 33 to 34 weeks and who stated that they were traveling for tourism, but they did not have a return ticket and could not say what they were going to do in the country.
According to the official, It is not a crime to give birth in Argentina if it is done with a visa: the person of non-Mercosur nationality – a block also made up of Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay – has to go to a consulate and obtain a visa explaining why they want to give birth in that country.
Although the Russian consulate “is insisting that they enter” The six women detained, the official indicated that care is being taken that other countries do not lose “trust” in Argentina and that all of them are assisted by a lawyer.
Christian Rubilar, an assistant to one of them, told several media outlets that he filed and won a habeas corpus due to what he considers the “false tourist figure”because it is an imputation of military law to civilians in a country that is not at war.
In addition, he denounced the existence of the “trafficking networks that deceive, capture and seek to bring women by promising them something they cannot obtain; They also scam them, in exchange for $15,000.”for which he said that he considered them victims, who cannot be arrested without a warrant.
In your opinion, the crime of unlawful deprivation of liberty is being committed with the aggravating factor of violence against women.
