Russian President Vladimir Putin is cracking down on workers from outside the country, revoking nearly 1,000 work visas for small-potato “administrative violations” such as jaywalking in the past year — and Western countries are bracing for it to get worse due to the conflict in Ukraine, European officials said.
Russian immigration officials are deporting and turning away workers for two or more of the infractions — which include traffic tickets and smoking in public. The harsher enforcement began after migration services and traffic police databases were linked last year, Bloomberg News reports.
“Individuals have been stopped on the border for having two speeding tickets and told their visa is no longer any good,” said Alexis Rodzianko, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Moscow.
European business officials had been working with the country to fix the deportation problem — which began before the president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, was ousted last month, prompting Putin to dump troops into the Crimea, a southeastern region of the country.
But those talks are now on hold, according to the Association of European Business, which lobbies for European companies.
One of the workers irked by the crackdown is New Zealander Quentin O’Toole of the firm Deloitte & Touche LLP, who was detained at the airport and held overnight in a cell in December — for speeding tickets, the paper reports.
O’Toole didn’t even commit the offenses, his wife did, he claimed.