Argentina’s immigration office said at the end of last week that more than 10,000 Russian women had landed in the country in the past twelve months to give birth. Not having to obtain a visa for Argentina, they hope to obtain dual nationality for their child. Sesame useful in view of the growing isolation of Russia against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.
10,500: this is the figure advanced on Friday by the Argentinian Immigration Office, as noted here Guardian, when counting the number of Russian women who made the trip to Argentina to give birth there in the past year.
The purpose of this “birth tourism”, according to the expression taken up by the site of the British newspaper? Giving birth to your baby abroad so that it obtains local nationality. A passport as a guarantee in case Russia’s growing isolation were to increase further because of its relentlessness against Ukraine.
However, Russians do not need a visa to travel to Argentina. All the more reason to end up on the side of Buenos Aires, Rosario or Santa Cruz.
“Lucrative Trade”
The phenomenon has taken on such proportions that Florencia Carignano – the director of Argentina’s Immigration Office – announced the launch of a judicial investigation into what she described as a “lucrative business” during an interview granted on Friday in Telenueva.
She delivered an eloquent illustration of this trend: for the single day of February 9, 33 pregnant Russians set foot on Argentine soil on leaving the same flight. All were more than eight months pregnant. A situation far from being atypical. Indeed, according to Florencia Carignano, of the 10,500 Russian parturients recently received in Argentina “there were 5,800 to be in the last trimester of pregnancy, and many of them declared to be in the 33rd or 34th week”.
In addition to the absence of a visa, the local services find it all the more difficult to deal with the problem since, in addition to the delicacy of returning a pregnant woman on the first flight, these unusual passengers are generally unaccompanied, have no no return ticket and little money.
Cynicism or exile?
This does not mean that future mothers intend to take root there. According to the director of the Immigration Office, 7,000 of them returned to Russia immediately after giving birth, leaving local lawyers to plead their child’s case and obtain Argentine nationality for him. A round trip marked by cynicism for Florencia Carignano, judging by the comments taken up by the Guardian:
“The problem is that they arrive, they have their child and then they leave Argentina never to return. We can’t allow them to shamelessly lie to us saying that they are tourists when they don’t. is not the case”.
But one of the lawyers commissioned by these patients from the east assures us that not all of them are trying to play with the law of the soil. So, as posed here Slate, Christian Rubilar told the LN+ channel that his client was above all in Argentina to “escape the war”. “Under Putin’s regime, not endorsing war is enough to send you to jail or to have your loved ones sent to the front line,” he said.
