We Have Been Granted Russian Citizenship

People write to us...

Good evening! I want to share my joy with you: we have been granted Russian citizenship! The three of us—me and my two children, aged 9 and 14—are from Uzbekistan; my mother was born there, as were my children and I.... But at some point in my life there, I realized that it was time to part with my homeland. The decision was actually very spontaneous; a combination of different circumstances played a role, and because of them I realized that I was doing everything the way it was meant to be done. I applied for documents as a repatriate: my father was born and still lives in Russia. The region we moved to is very reluctant to accept participants in the State Resettlement Program, but as a repatriate I had the right to choose any region. And I chose it because my father and grandmother live there. After all, separating from your homeland is easier when someone close to you is nearby. I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said I didn't have major difficulties, from the time I arrived right through to submitting my citizenship application. I don't know what this depends on—probably mostly on the region I came to—but I did absolutely everything very quickly. That is, the journey from my arrival to obtaining citizenship took exactly three months. There was a problem arranging migration registration, so I literally spent a week doing nothing, because all the subsequent steps begin with registering for migration purposes. But after I had arranged it, I immediately went with the package of documents I had been given in my country of origin and activated my resettler's certificate. Then I translated and had notarized all the documents I had, which is necessary to do first thing after activating the certificate, because when you start your medical examination and visit all the other offices, they will ask you for translations of your passports and your children's birth certificates, if you have any. After that, you need to go to a Multifunctional Center (MFC) to get SNILS and verify your account on Gosuslugi. If you don't have a local SIM card, you'll need to visit Sberbank. They will collect your biometrics—that is, a photo and fingerprints—and there they will open a SIM card in your foreign passport's name; it wouldn't hurt to get a bank card as well. We also completed the medical examination very quickly, literally in four days. We had trouble figuring out the sequence of steps because I didn't really understand what needed to be done first and what could wait. Then I would advise you to sign up for the Russian language and law exam. I did this almost at the very end and had to wait a little, but it was only two weeks. That didn't make much difference to me, since I was waiting for our green migrant cards to be issued. Green migrant cards are issued after the medical examination—that is, once you have all the results in hand, you can get these cards. After all these steps—that is, activating the certificate, migration registration, then signing up for the exam, then the medical examination, and getting the green migrant card—you can submit your citizenship application if you passed the exam and completed the medical examination. I advise you not to fill out the application and questionnaire yourself; it's better to pay someone who does this professionally, because there are a lot of nuances, and doing it yourself without making mistakes or knowing exactly how to write everything correctly is very difficult, practically impossible. Above all, you'll lose time; they'll find an error, and after you correct it, you'll have to wait some more before you can submit the documents again. Thank you to my inspector, who guided me from beginning to end—a kind and responsive employee! I couldn't book an appointment to submit my citizenship application myself; my inspector did it. I had to wait a little, but two weeks is not two months, so I submitted the documents on October 6, and on the 29th the Ministry of Internal Affairs called me and gave me the happy news that we had been accepted! And today, November 1, a letter arrived at my address, and it said that the decision had been made back on October 21, so practically everything was ready in just two weeks! I don't know which gods to pray to for such an outcome, but I'm very happy, and I wanted to share it with you.

The author's spelling and punctuation have been preserved.