Well forgotten new

Heads of the Federal Migration Service advise not to chase a biometric passport

The leaders of the Federal Migration Service, who have long advertised the advantages of biometric documents, are now forced to promote old-style international passports. Apparently, a change in direction in explanatory work with compatriots occurred after the service realized: the units where the new type of IDs are issued, with electronic storage media, are simply not coping with the influx of Russians . “The old passports continue to be valid, their replacement will be carried out as planned, so that there is no rush,” Deputy Director of the FMS Mikhail Tyurkin said at a press conference at the end of last week. According to him, “biometric passports have no special advantages,” and old documents have the same legal force.

True, soon after this, FMS employees demonstrated that passports with a chip and a plastic page still have some advantages - for example, it is not so easy to spoil them through negligence. “Our employee spent a week with his passport in his back pocket. And nothing, like new,” said Mr. Tyurkin, and to prove the reliability of the document, he immediately crushed his daughter’s passport in his fist in front of the journalists. “Here it is, in excellent condition, no traces.”

As Mikhail Tyurkin reported, in 2007, 135 thousand new passports were issued in the country, and in the first month of this year there were already 29 thousand and 53 thousand applications were accepted. According to the deputy director of the Federal Migration Service, now 100 service units in 25 constituent entities of the federation are ready to accept applications from Russians for new generation passports. At the same time, the FMS plans to open a total of 290 points for issuing biometric passports by April 1, 2008, and by the end of the year to increase their number to 626. “On instructions from the government, by the end of 2009, all divisions of the service will be equipped with the equipment necessary to issue new passports . We are moving strictly according to plan,” Mr. Tyurkin assured.

The FMS plans to issue a million passports by the end of the year. At the same time, there are many more people who want to receive a new document with a chip in which a photograph and personal data will be stored. Since the beginning of the year, there have been hours-long queues at the service’s few converted units, and the FMS was simply not ready to process the required number of applications. In addition, technical difficulties arose with filling out electronic forms. The head of the FMS, Konstantin Romodanovsky, having personally inspected several passport offices in Moscow, in principle shared the indignation of the residents of the capital and even promised that such flaws in the work “could lead to the dismissal of some heads of points issuing biometric foreign passports.”

At the end of last week, his deputy Mikhail Tyurkin reported that all problems had been resolved, and without personnel losses. “Investigations have been carried out regarding the problems, there are employees who have been punished, but no one has been fired,” said the deputy director of the FMS. According to him, regular “raids” on territorial offices indicate that the situation is changing for the better. “The excitement has subsided, there are no huge queues. For us, the most important thing is that people don’t stand in line at four in the morning,” Mr. Tyurkin assured and once again suggested that Muscovites issue old passports, which “are still fully valid.”

Those who are not ready to take the word of the FMS employees, who claim that even with the old passport there will be no problems when entering the European Union and the United States after 2009, will have to go through the standard procedure. In the “greenhouse” conditions of the central office of the Federal Migration Service, it is worked out automatically and takes only a few minutes. The citizen is photographed with a special device, and the “photo session” is carried out until the “model” is satisfied with the image. “The only problem is that women take photographs for a very long time,” noted Mr. Tyurkin. Then, according to him, the photo, along with the electronic application form, is sent to Goznak, where a new passport is made - with a plastic page containing a chip with encoded information. “The degree of protection is very high,” assured the deputy head of the FMS, explaining that it was precisely because of the increased complexity of passport production that the state duty increased. Registration of a biometric document will cost 1000 rubles in addition to the time lost in queues. “We already charge at cost,” assures Mikhail Tyurkin.

Kirill MELNIKOV