29.04.05

After Outcry, Work Permits Being Issued Again

By Carl Schreck and Oksana Yablokova

STAFF WRITERS

The Federal Migration Service said Wednesday that il had resumed issuing work permits to expatriates working for the representative and branch offices of foreign companies, ending a four-month logjam that threatened to leave scores of companies without qualified foreign staff.

A migration service spokeswoman could not say when her office had begun processing work permits again, but a lawyer familiar with the issue said migration officials had started accepting applications last Thursday.

The logjam had prompted widespread concern in the foreign business community. The American Chamber of Commerce in Russia fiercely lobbied Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov's office for a resolution. TNK-BP CEO Robert Dudley, in a blistering attack against government policy toward investors at the Russian Economic Forum on April 12, said the work permit problem was making it difficult for foreign companies to bring qualified management to Russia.

Federal Migration Service spokeswoman Olga Karnovich downplayed the problem Wednesday. It was "a glitch due to technical problems, but as far as I know it was brief," she said. Karnovich refused to elaborate on what technical problems could have caused the glitch.

The migration service stopped issuing permits for expatriate staff at the representative and branch offices of foreign companies after it apparently modified its policy in January to bar firms that are not registered as so-called "legal entities" from receiving the permits.

All foreign workers are required to obtain work permits under the Law on Foreign Workers, which came into force in November 2002. A work permit lasts for one year, and the migration service is required by law lo respond to an application for a permit within one month.

But the service had been holding on to the applications. Sergei Melnikov of Your Lawyer, a law firm that specializes in visa and work regulation issues, said he had filed work permit applications for clients in December, but from January, the migration service had refused to accept any more applications, and the ones he had already filed were not being processed.

Melnikov said the migration service began accepting applications again last Thursday. "It's unclear why they resumed, but apparently the issue finally reached the proper authorities in the migration service," he said.

Melnikov said he was not aware of any foreign companies having to pay fines for expatriate staff who lacked work permits. "Officials understand that they cannot punish companies financially because their applications were not being accepted," he said.

Foreign employees and their companies had faced fines of more than $1,000 for each employee who did not have a work permit. The requirement for the permits was widely perceived as an attempt to stem the flow of illegal workers from impoverished former Soviet republics - not to create a headache ror employees of well-established companies. Andrew Somers, president of the American Chamber of Commerce, was in the United States and unavailable for comment Wednesday. Somers said last month that he had raised the issue with Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov's chief of staff, Sergei Naryshkin, and won a promise that the matter would be looked into.

“The Moscow Times” 28/04/2005