Closing of the Russian Consulate General: Opinions of the Russians of San Francisco

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The closure of the Russian Consulate General in San Francisco will affect the work of Russian businessmen in the Bay Area, who rely on easy access to the consulate to support their companies.

One of these is the founder of the Improvado data aggregation startup Daniel Kravtsov, writes SF Gate.

Kravtsov, who lives in the United States on an O-1 visa, had to make two trips to the consulate only last year: once, to certify some official documents, and the second time when money in his Russian bank account was stolen.

“This is very inconvenient... Now we will have to travel to another city. I’m upset that everything is going in this direction,” Kravtsov said, adding that after the sudden closure, the only city left with a Russian consulate on the West Coast was Seattle.

The Russian consulate in San Francisco was the center for Russians living on the West Coast, and some flew in from Los Angeles and even Phoenix.

Despite the fact that Russians do not often need to interact with the consulate, if they have to do this, the reasons are usually very important and not tolerant of postponement: an extension of a passport, a request for a birth certificate or a check for the police.

Signing up for a meeting at a consulate in San Francisco was not an easy and time consuming process. After its closure, according to experts, the solution of documentary issues for Russians in the United States will become much more complicated.

Bay Area immigration attorney Andrei Romanenko suggests that if you need to update your passport, people will have to wait for a meeting at the consulate for about three months.

He added that the duration of waiting for visas at the US embassy in Russia in connection with the reduction of staff there will also greatly increase.

This can be an unpleasant moment for tourists, but for students on an F-1 visa, as well as for workers on an H-1B visa situation can be critical, because the start of training or their working contract is tied to a clear date, and late receipt of a visa can be serious problem.

Mutual expulsion from the countries of American and Russian diplomats began on December 29 2016 of the year, when 44 of US President Barack Obama signed a decree obliging Russian diplomats 35 to leave America. This document also closed their colleagues with access to two real estate properties in the states of New York and Maryland, which, according to American intelligence, were used by Russians for espionage.

In response, Russia banned the US Embassy from using a summer cottage in Serebryany Bor and storage facilities on Dorozhnaya Street in the south of Moscow. Russian authorities also expressed the need reducing the American embassy to xnumx people, to equalize their number with the number of employees in the Russian diplomatic mission in the United States.

In response to this, the US Embassy in Russia suspended the issuance of non-immigrant visas August 23 to September 1 2017. The issuance of renewed 1 September, but only in Moscow (before a visa could also be obtained in the consulate general in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok).

In addition, in response The United States decided to close the Russian Consulate General in San Francisco and some sales offices in Washington and New York.

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