Russia Eases Work Permit Sanctions for Foreign Managers

Although Moscow has surpassed its number allocation for foreign workers, managers in select areas of specialization can still get their work permits. This was announced by Federal Migration Service officials this week.

Oleg Artamonov, a Federal Migration Service official informed the American Chamber of Commerce that work permits were being sanctioned to a select group of foreign workers based at Moscow even though the allocated numbers for taking on people had been reached. Since certain specialized people are required to be in Russia, the Health and Social Development Ministry had issued instructions to sanction work permits to them. Though the order from the ministry has not been taken on board by the ministry of Justice, it is being followed in spirit according to Konstantin Poltoranin, a representative of Russia's migration service.

Specialised workers make a very miniscule part of the entire foreign work force and in fact constitute less than 3%, said Poltoranin. Therefore, it was not difficult for directives to be issued in order to provide extra work permits to this specialized work force.
The new policy has been implemented for a fortnight but was not publicised until this week, said Andrew Somers who heads the Russian American Chamber of Commerce. Somers explained that a lot more clarity was required on this issue considering that the quota for foreign workers had been filled and there was no public knowledge of the exceptions made by the Ministry of Justice for specialized workers.