Granting citizenship to persons living abroad: Russian policy and international experience
Abstract
The article discusses issues regarding the granting of Russian citizenship to persons living abroad. In the context of international experience, the Russian practice is one of the most large-scale and is showing a tendency to expand. Granting political rights to persons not living in the country of citizenship brings certain risks of influencing the political processes in the country itself. Economic guarantees for the new citizens are provided at the expense of the working population of this country and its other resources, while the new citizens do not participate in the formation of social funds. The authors conclude that the recent decisions to simplify the acquisition of Russian citizenship by residents of the South-Eastern regions of Ukraine (without the requirement to move to Russia) could potentially have tangible economic and political consequences for the population of Russia that are still difficult to predict. The world’s experience of the policy of interaction with “compatriots" and the Diaspora is ambiguous. It shows that countries granting citizenship or giving preferences to compatriots living abroad do not use citizenship as the only tool. They implement a system of statuses, granting some rights and limiting others, and setting a time frame for such programs. The authors conclude that at present the approaches to granting Russian citizenship to persons living outside Russia need to be revised, because the continuing practice and its scale do not fully meet the interests of the Russian population.
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References
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