The increased flow of Russian women coming to Argentina to give birth may serve as a cover for espionage. A similar version is not ruled out in the country’s parliament, MP Jose Manuel Lopez told RTVI.
On February 10, the Argentine Migration Service refused to allow six pregnant Russian citizens into the country. The agency took into account false information about the purpose of entry, which they provided.
Later the women were allowed to enter the country, but after this incident the Migration Service and the Federal Police of Argentina begin check the reservation, which in their applications for entry was indicated by Russian tourists who arrived on February 9 on a Turkish Airlines flight. As a result, it was found that 3 out of 25 addresses did not really exist.
According to the director of Argentina’s Migration Board, Florencia Carignano, on February 9, there were 33 pregnant Russian women on board another Ethiopian Airlines flight. Many of them, as the official explained, come because a child born in Argentina automatically receives citizenship of the country by land law, and parents can apply for a residence permit. In total, according to Carignano, about 21,000 Russians came to Argentina last year, half of them pregnant women. At the same time, 7,000 Russian women LEFT out of the country after giving birth. At the end of January, the head of the consular service of the Russian Embassy in Argentina, Georgy Polin, in an interview with The Guardian said that in 2022, up to 2.5 thousand Russians moved to the country, including pregnant women.
“The problem is that they come, have children, leave and never come back. If we don’t start controlling who we give passports to, we will lose the trust of other countries,” the head of Argentina’s migration service said on local television channel C5N.
On February 10, Carignano met with US Ambassador to Argentina Mark Stanl. According to a Facebook post from the Argentine Migration Service*, it was “a migration policy within the framework of a bicentennial bilateral relationship”.
Some representatives of the local parliament also favor tighter control over who comes into the country. Thus, the deputy Jose Manuel Lopez, in a conversation with RTVI, explained that he considers these measures necessary “so that the country does not turn into a safe haven where you can hide from sanctions”.
According to him, since “Argentina has not only imposed drastic sanctions on Russia, like other democratic countries, but also has not strongly condemned” its actions in Ukraine, “members of the Russian leadership can come to Argentina to hide their assets”. Lopez also did not rule out that the Russians could use simplified immigration laws for espionage purposes.
“I don’t rule out this hypothesis, and we are working on it, because the number of people who entered the country last year is simply incredible, and there have been events in the world, for example, the arrest in Slovenia of an intelligence agent who apparently posed as an Argentinian”, – he said.
La Nacion wrote about the US Department of Homeland Security’s interest in data on the number of pregnant Russian women who came to Argentina, citing sources. According to the publication, the United States is concerned about obtaining Argentine citizenship by those who appear to be the fathers of newborns and also have the right to citizenship.
At the beginning of December last year, a married couple was arrested in Ljubljana for spying for Russia. How writing Associated Press (AP), an Argentinian passport was found in the possession of one of those arrested.
For more on how pregnant Russian women got Argentina thinking about fighting espionage, see the special reports RTVI
* owned by Meta, which is recognized as an extremist organization and banned in Russia
