Immigration authorities in Argentina are cracking down on Russian women who since the invasion of Ukraine have started travelling to Buenos Aires to give birth in order to gain Argentinian citizenship for their children.
The director of Argentina’s immigration office, Florencia Carignano, said on Friday that a judicial investigation has been launched into what she described as a lucrative business that promises Argentinian passports for the Russian parents.
Carignano spoke after 33 expecting women – all between 32 and 34 weeks into their pregnancies – arrived on the same flight late on Thursday. Several of the women were initially turned away at passport control but were eventually let into the country.
While the concept of birth tourism isn’t new, Moscow’s isolation from the west as a result of the war has made Argentina, where Russians face no visa requirements, a popular destination for families looking to give their children the privileges of second citizenship.
Some 10,500 pregnant Russians have arrived in the South American country in the past year, Carignano said.
Carignano said in a Telenueve channel interview on Friday that “5,800 of them [were] in the last three months, many of them declaring they were in the 33rd or 34th week of pregnancy.”
The official said that about 7,000 of the women returned home after giving birth, leaving Argentinian lawyers charged with applying for Argentinian citizenship for the baby – and then the parents.
“The problem is that they arrive, have their children and then leave Argentina never to come back,” Carignano said. “We cannot allow them to shamelessly lie to us saying that they are tourists when they are not.”
Christian Rubilar, a lawyer representing one of the women delayed in the airport, said his client was a Russian woman who was 32 weeks pregnant and had come to Argentina “escaping from the war”.
“In Putin’s regime, not agreeing to the war is enough for one to go to jail or for members of her family to be sent to the frontline of battle,” he told the LN+ cable news channel.
By Friday afternoon, two of the Russian women remained inside Buenos Aires airport, unable to pass through immigration control.
“They are not under arrest,” said a spokesperson for the immigration authorities, adding that negotiations were under way to send them back to their point of departure – an effort complicated by the fact the women arrived unaccompanied, with little money, without return tickets and more than 30 weeks pregnant.
