Hi, I've got my visa situation squared away since I'm an accredited foreign journalist and will be able to have year-long visa issued to me without leaving the country. However, getting my visa registered is a problem since my Russian landlord lives in the U.S. and cannot be physically present in order to do the registration. This requirement for physical presence of the landlord is absolute. I went down to my local branch of the Federal Migration Service and quizzed them about this. They said that the landlord had to be in person either at their office or the post office (if registering by mail), and that a letter of attorney from the landlord would not work. They said that upon registration, the landlord's presence was actually more important than my presence. I don't have any other landlord I can ask to do this for me, and looking for one is impractical and inexpedient at this point. I also can't get registered through my employer, since they do not have a registered office in Russia. Getting a Russian temporary/permanent residence permit is also impractical for me for the same reason as the visas -- I have nowhere to be registered in Moscow.
In the past, I've solved this problem in various ways, including using the services of a visa agency (Visa Link) to register visas which were not initiated by them. Recently, Visa Link told me that due to restrictive new rules, they will only be able to register a year-long visa for three months at a time, meaning that I would have to pay 1500 rubles every three months and leave Russia and come back in order to be registered for the next three months. This doesn't really sound right to me, and I'm wondering how those of you in the same boat (landlord lives abroad) have solved this problem in the current visa regime and whether maybe you could recommend a visa agency that can do registrations (of visas that are not their own) for longer and/or without having to leave the country. Kirill. _______________________________________________ Expat mailing list [email protected] http://www.lists.ru/mailman/listinfo/expat http://www.expat.ru/forum/
