(Buenos Aires) They come to escape the war, the climate or the “grey” in Russia, for the quality of care, and also… to obtain an ideal passport for their baby. For nearly a year, an increasing flow of Russians have come to give birth in Argentina, to the point of inconveniencing the authorities.
They were tens, then hundreds, and continue to flow by non-direct flights. “December and January were a peak. Pregnant women arrive up to 14 or 15 per flight […] an avalanche”, concedes Florencia Carignano, Director of Migrations. Which evokes more than 5,800 Russian parturients “in the last three months”.
In the hall and around the Finochietto clinic, a chic private establishment near the center of Buenos Aires, you can’t miss them: young women with fair skin and eyes, very advanced pregnancy or a baby in their arms, who go or chat, in groups or in pairs, making the Russian language resonate, notes AFP.
“It started about a year ago, very slowly, we didn’t realize,” Guillermo Capuya, the clinic’s external relations officer, told AFP. “Then we saw in the last semester these deliveries increase exponentially. Out of 200 (births) in the month, 50 are Russians”.
“90% of them say they came in search of a better future,” said Elena Shkitenkova, a Russian-Argentine immigrant for 20 years and who had become an interpreter, but also an accompanist and helper for these women who were sometimes alone and lost in the world. the arrival. However, they are guided by word of mouth and social networks.
“Best future for my son”
“When they found out they were expecting a boy, many said to themselves, ‘I don’t want my son to have a future like this (war). I want him to live, I want peace for him, a better future. I give him this nationality (Argentinian), and he will choose his path”. To see the expression in their eyes when they tell me that, I have goosebumps,” Elena says.
A better future, and already a present? This is what assures AFP Elena (who refuses to give her name), 32, arrived in February 2022 with her husband and two daughters aged 4 and 7, and who gave birth in May in Buenos Areas in Severina.
“Of course, the war played a role, but not decisive”, assures in English Elena, one of the rare “Russian mothers” who agrees to speak to the press. “Perhaps my husband would have been mobilized if we had stayed […] But for years we said we wanted to leave, travel, and last year it was made possible. Incidentally, the death of his father, allowing him to sell the apartment and have money.
Behind her, her little girls are frolicking on a lawn by 33 degrees. Elena, all smiles, can’t believe “the nice people in Argentina, the climate, the culture […] Every day we love here a little more,” she says. While waiting for a permanent residence, and determined to integrate, she is looking for a job with her husband, a web designer.
A wanted passport
Profiles like Elena, Argentina welcomes them “with open arms”, underlines Mme Carignano. What disturbs are the thousands who come, give birth, and leave. With the suspicion “of mafia organizations (in) taking advantage to grant our passport to people who do not want to reside in our country”. And “irregularities” along the way.
It is that the Argentinian passport, accessible in the name of jus soli, and which allows visa-free access to 175 countries, is very sought after, underlines Mr.me Carignano. She is moved that it will eventually be “devalued”, even a source of mistrust, citing the case of Russians suspected of spying recently arrested in Slovenia… with an Argentinian passport.
Sector, or trade? A Russian living in Buenos Aires, on condition of anonymity, told AFP that he charged around $15,000 for a legal and “professional” service (advice, procedures, interpreting, medical package) . It can be as much as $35,000, according to police. Not within reach of all rubles.
On Thursday, the police carried out searches in the wealthy district of Puerto Madero, without arrests, but seizing telephones, computer equipment, immigration documents, euros, dollars and pesos, targeting what would be “the first line of a criminal organization.
Maternity, or passport, tourism is nothing new or unique to Argentina. A Russian father of an “Argentinian” baby told AFP that he had also considered Mexico, Chile, Brazil…
“If you have a little money, and you can give birth to your son elsewhere than in Russia, you will do it”, summarizes an intermediary. These days, any border passport is better than a Russian one.