migration card

when you enter russia, every foreigner has to fill in a special migration card. one half of the card is then being retained by the border guards and the second half has to be handed back in upon exiting the country again. reportedly, this was introduced because every year, around 15 million entered russia, but only 10 million exited again... the authorities had no idea where or who the remaining 5 million people are... presumably, most of those non-exiters are from the cis (former soviet union countries). and since russia has visa-free regimes with most, if not all of these countries, rather than re-introducing visa requirements for them (not possible since one of the purposes of the cis is the visa-free regime), they just introduced the famous migration card.

in any case, since early 2003, we long-term resident-expats of russia are used to this by now. not much of a big deal, a few minutes of scribbling around on the little russian/english-piece of paper.

recently, however, the migration card was revised. when i flew back into the country last week, i had my first encounter with the new card.

not sure whether the authorities are actually trying to deter foreigners to come to russia, but now the card is only in russian language, with no translation into english or any other language being provided. those poor tourists...

any other, or normal, country would actually try to make things easier for tourists, but oh no, not the russian federation!

to make things even more chaotic, of course there was no advance warning whatsoever regarding that change. it was simply changed from one day to the other. no agency servicing tourists, nor air companies, was able to prepare for the new card.

i am just waiting for the day when they will require all foreigners to fill in the migration card in russian language...
(it would be even more fun if those with grammar mistakes in russian would then be refused entry into the country)