Official Address Registration in Russia

[birch2013 4]

Hello,

My fiancee is Russian and is in Moscow right now for her fiancee visa interview. She plans to go to the U.S. straight from Moscow shortly. She currently has an official address registration with her aunt, 1,000 miles from Moscow, in a city she will not go back to any time soon.

What is anyone's advice on the official address registration? Why would she pay to keep it, especially with the new law which means she will have more paperwork to do to register her green card the next time she goes back to Russia after getting her green card?

Is is ok to de-register that address, and not have a registered address in Russia? Is it possible to register a U.S. address as her official address? Is it possible to do this from Moscow, when she is registered in another city?

As an American, this process is very foreign to me.

[mendeleev 68]

You're right, it is very foreign. Registration is a practice that dates back to czarist times. However, U.S. permanent residents have to tell USCIS -- or at least they are supposed to -- every time they change residence, too. That surprised me when I learned about it a few years back.

It is possible to register with a Russian consulate here in the USA as a Russian citizen living abroad. Search this forum and you'll learn more about that. It has come up in the past. Russia seems like a country always in flux. My wife keeps her registration in Russia and maybe at the margin or more it helps her maintain ties to her homeland that are important to her. The importance of those ties have not diminished over the years.

Russian citizens, to my knowledge, do not need special registration abroad if they are permanent residents but only if they take up a second citizenship abroad. And that will be the case regardless of where one has one's registration or propiska.

[birch2013 4]

Thanks, mendeleev!

I appreciate the information.

[workin4somethin 0]

So, birch2015, what was the outcome?

I think a U.S. green card holder will need to register the next time they are in Russia, just as a U.S. citizen is required to do. I read that there are 3 categories of Russian citizens who must register: dual citizens, holders of residency permits, and holders of permanent residency permits.

Also, I have 'not' read where one can register through a Russian embassy or consulate office here in the U.S. or in any other country outside Russia. I have seen only that, "notification must be submitted 'in person' to the relevant local FMS authority or through an office of the Russian Federal Postal Service." Whether the latter can apply to a post office outside the city of one's official residence for Russian passport registration purposes, I have not seen anything on this.

It seems to me that it would be prudent for any Russian citizen to contact (phone) a Russian consulate office here in the U.S. and ask them to answer any questions or concerns prior to next traveling to Russia.

[Hollyday 122]

So, birch2015, what was the outcome?

I think a U.S. green card holder will need to register the next time they are in Russia, just as a U.S. citizen is required to do. I read that there are 3 categories of Russian citizens who must register: dual citizens, holders of residency permits, and holders of permanent residency permits.

Also, I have 'not' read where one can register through a Russian embassy or consulate office here in the U.S. or in any other country outside Russia. I have seen only that, "notification must be submitted 'in person' to the relevant local FMS authority or through an office of the Russian Federal Postal Service." Whether the latter can apply to a post office outside the city of one's official residence for Russian passport registration purposes, I have not seen anything on this.

It seems to me that it would be prudent for any Russian citizen to contact (phone) a Russian consulate office here in the U.S. and ask them to answer any questions or concerns prior to next traveling to Russia.

A little on original post: you don't pay for maintenance of 'permanent registration' so she can just either keep it or not.

As for 'registering' in this reply i think there's some confusion: there is 1. residence address registration (can be permanent and temporary) and 2. registering dual citizenship / permanent residence abroad for Russian citizens who have any kind of residence address registration (1).

It is possible to remove permanent registration without reregistering (I told them my mom was selling the apartment i was registered in and i needed to be unregistered before the deal took place). In my case, since i got a temporary one afterwards, i had to report my green card.

When she comes to Russia she may have to be registered temporarily - depending on the time she spends in Russia and whether she needs to make any legal actions (a lot of services require having registration, like banks when you open an account and such).

(2) has to be done by her if she has registration and can only be done from within Russia - through a post office or migration office. Only Russian citizens without (1) are exempt and they had to be away when the legislation came in effect. If a Russian with a registration comes into Russia now for the first time since the law is active they'd have to report GC / second citizenship within 60 days of entering Russia.

Neither (1) or (2) is 'registering same as an American would be doing' because what Americans go through is being registered as foreigners coming to a specific address. It's different for Russian citizens.