Pregnant Russian women are flocking to Argentina to give birth to their children and gain the country’s citizenship for the newborns amid Ukraine invasion, Argentina’s immigration authorities said. The authorities also said that are cracking down on Russian pregnant women, BBC reported.
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Argentina’s immigration office director Florencia Carignano said that the country has launched a judicial investigation into this “lucrative business” that includes assurance of Argentinian passports for the Russian parents. Interacting with 33 Russian women, who were 32 to 34 weeks pregnant and had arrived in Buenos Aires on the same flight, the official said that many of the women were not given entry earlier but were later on allowed to enter the country.
Argentina has emerged as a popular destination for Russian families hoping to give their children the privileges of dual citizenship, BBC reported while Florencia Carignano said that around 10,500 pregnant Russians arrived in Amsterdam in the past year.
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“5,800 of them (were) in the last three months, many of them declaring they were in the 33rd or 34th week of pregnancy,” he said saying that around 7,000 women gave birth to their children and then returned to Russia.
“The problem is that they arrive, have their children and then leave Argentina never to come back. We cannot allow them to shamelessly lie to us saying that they are tourists when they are not,” he said.
Lawyer Christian Rubilar, representing one of the Russian women, said that the women were “escaping from the war”.
“In Putin’s regime, not agreeing to the war is enough for one to go to jail or for members of her family to be sent to the frontline of battle,” he said.
