Moscow continues to grow, but is the party for expats over? British expat blogger Copydude has more on this phenomenon here while German expat Chris "Two Zero" lays out the costs of living in Moscow here

Moscow remains the undisputed economic hub of the country and the place thousands of young Russians move to every year for better job opportunities and more excitement. However, it is not the same city it was five years ago - a place where adventurous twenty, thirty and fortysomething foreigners would often come not speaking a word of Russian, freelance while staying on revolving door business visas, teach English and network with other expats and prospective employers, until finding a better job at a local or global company.

With the implementation of a more restrictive visa regime in October 2007, those days are gone. The new laws made it easier for individual Russians and businesses to register foreigners at their local OVIR (Federal Migration Service of the Russian Federation) office within the legally required three days. This reform has deprived notoriously underpaid Russian cops of their favorite pretext for demanding bribes from foreigners "without proper visa registration". Foreigners visiting during the Russian holidays when OVIR offices are closed also no longer have to pay "visa agencies" $70 or get an expensive hotel room in order to obtain this simple stamp. However, the new laws put an end to the common practice of foreigners without work permits taking the train to Vilnius or Kiev for a three-day weekend, getting their visas stamped at the local Russian embassy, then returning good to go for another three months in Russia.

Staying in Russia: The Dilemma for Independent Expats

Starting out as an expat not already enrolled on a corporate payroll in Russia has become more difficult, even as there are more job opportunities for native English-speakers than ever before in the country. Salaries for traditional entry-level expat positions like teaching English or copyediting remain low by Moscow standards. Many Moscow firms can't find enough native English-speaking financial and legal editors willing to work for these wages fulltime. After giving up on obtaining work permits for these positions, many firms have turned to outsourcing and are seeking overseas freelancers to edit important English documents on a part time basis. Teaching English in Russia is probably best left to recent university grads who are adventurous enough to spurn Moscow and St. Petersburg for the regions.

Even when an employer is willing to spend the time and money to do the paperwork, issuing work permits can take the Federal Migration Service six weeks, four months, or longer, depending on the locality and relative clout of the company. Work permit applications must be submitted from the Russian consulate closest to the employee's hometown in their own country. Non-CIS foreigners who meet potential employers while visiting Russia will usually have to return to their homeland, apply with the nearest Russian consulate, and hurry up and wait for several months. Americans seeking work in Russia can console themselves with the fact that this process remains much easier than what Russians will go through trying to get visas in the U.S.

The Plight of Russian Employers Seeking to Hire Foreigners

A common alternative to coming to Russia on a work visa from an employer - obtaining a business visa and then seeking employment - used to be feasible if you had several months and a few thousand dollars to burn. A business visa allows for multiple entries in a single year, but thanks to the new law, individuals can only stay in Russia for ninety days out of every 180-day period, meaning three months are required between stays. Overstaying on a visa could bar a foreigner from re-entering the country. Paying a foreigner "under the table" while he or she is staying in Russia on this type of visa is illegal, although it remains a common practice at some Russian companies, and represents a throwback to the Nineties when employees were paid in dollar-stuffed envelopes.

Getting caught paying "unofficial" salaries by the authorities, who often seek to personally collect the "fines", could subject employers to penalties such as the loss of any additional work permits. In that case, the employee could be left high and dry, with no legal recourse to stay in Russia after their temporary visa expires. Thus for both the employer and employee, a paid "tryout" period while the employee is living in Russia on a business visa can be a risky proposition.

ZAGS, or the "Palace of Weddings" in Moscow, February 2008
Photo by: Jacob Aleksander of the RecountingRus blog

A Few Facts to Know Before Marrying a Russian Citizen

There is, of course, one other way to legally stay in Russia if a foreigner cannot obtain a work permit - get married. Expats who are considering marrying a Russian citizen while in the country on a valid business visa may be able to legally stay in the country while awaiting permanent residency, provided that their Russian spouse can prove that he or she has a registered home and earns an income deemed sufficient to support the foreign spouse. Since foreigners cannot legally work in Russia without a work permit, however, only the income of the Russian spouse counts towards the required minimal level of support. If the bride is an eighteen year old student living with her parents, then going this route is probably not advisable. If the Russian bride or groom is older with a decent salary and is willing to support their spouse for a few months until the foreigner can find legal paid work, then it might prove feasible.

Another fact to be aware of is that, with the exception of urgent cases when the bride is obviously pregnant, marriage licenses in Russia are typically issued thirty days after the couple first appears together in person to sign an application stating their intentions. This makes it difficult for couples to get married while the foreign partner is visiting on a 30-day tourist visa, unless the couple can make a beeline to the wedding palace straight from the airport (needless to say, if you have not spent a considerable amount of time with your Russian bride or groom, such quickie marriages are ill-advised). Some clergy in Russia and Ukraine might be willing to perform a religious (but not legal) ceremony without a government-issued marriage license, but Russian Orthodox priests usually will not perform the sacrament of vinchane (crowning) without a certificate. Moscow only has one "ZAGS" (Zapis Aktov Grazhdanskogo Sostoyaniya) where foreigners can marry Russian citizens, at 17 Butyrsky Ulitsa. In every other major Russian city, contact the nearest ZAGS office and foreign consulate for more details.

Before getting married, all foreigners will need a current, valid visa in their passport, and previously divorced partners will need a death certificate for their former spouse or divorce decrees to obtain additional documents proving that they are legally free to remarry. Every foreign legal document must be translated into Russian by a notary public, and both British and American citizens must sign affidavits at their embassies affirming that they are free to marry (for FAQs, click here and here). The last step in this process is registering the marriage with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow, located at Neopalimovskiy Pereulok, dom 12a near the Smolenskaya Metro station on Moscow's dark blue line.

At first, the idea of staying in Russia with a spouse may sound wonderful, especially for a foreigner who speaks Russian and/or has marketable skills in a growth industries in Russia, such as energy, construction, hospitality, finance or high-end retail management. But foreigners intending to take a Russian spouse back to their homeland may encounter some difficulties. Staying in Russia for a few years could make proving that you and your spouse intend to reside permanently in your home country (especially if your spouse wants to obtain a green card in the U.S.) a more challenging proposition. In any case, couples should be prepared for several months of waiting for an interview at their nearest Embassy or Consulate followed by years of tedious paperwork and government application fees, to say nothing of the legal costs if the couple hires an attorney.

It is highly recommended that couples contemplating marriage should at least obtain an initial consultation with an immigration lawyer to find out which questions they need answered (be advised, not all of the information on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services websites is up to date and many programs involving expedited petitioner filing for adjustment of status in select cities are subject to change). Moscow has many lawyers fluent in English that specialize in assisting petitioners and foreign adoptive parents with their immigration cases, and these law firms list their services on websites such as expat.ru and redtape.ru. Expat.ru and other forums also feature online message boards with helpful advice on these topics.

For U.S. citizens, legally marrying a spouse abroad and bringing him or her to the U.S. on a K-3 (spouse) visa is usually going to take longer than going through with a K-1 fiancée visa, due to the fact that USCIS requires evidence that couple have been legally married according to the laws of the country where the petitioners first obtained their marriage license.

Cover of eXile publisher Mark Ames book, published in 2000

Turn Out the Lights, the Party's Over:
The End of The eXile?

Changes in Russian law and the job market have clearly accelerated the change in Russia's expat culture, with an increasing proportion of the arrivals consisting of senior and upper level managers. Expats who have come to Russia to work for their current employer, usually a large Western oil and gas, consumer staples, or accounting firm, now greatly outnumber the adventurous souls who came over on their own. Corporate expats are much more likely to be married with children than their non-corporate counterparts, and to spend less money in clubs. This is one reason why the notorious English-language paper The eXile shut down its print edition earlier this year due to declining ad revenues. Although some foreigners may cite The eXile's collapse as another example of Russia's ongoing "crackdown on free media", with the advent of the web, print newspapers around the world are struggling to maintain ad revenues, and alternative papers like The eXile are stuck with even thinner margins than regular dailies. At the end of the day, publishing the gonzo, smutty, and frequently misogynistic paper was no longer worth the hassle for its Russian backers, so now The eXile is published exclusively online.

In an epitaph for the notorious Moscow alternative, Newsweek's Moscow correspondent Owen Matthews described the folding of The eXile as marking the end of a wild and hedonistic era in Russian history, a decade when many Russians partied like mad - because tomorrow they could be lose it all or die (in fact, many more businessmen and journalists were killed during the 90s and early 2000s than now). For their part, The eXile's surly expat editors have declared that they may quit Russia for good and relocate to Panama, where American middle aged slackers are presumably more welcome and the cost of living is substantially lower.

Another example of this sea change was highlighted in Russian popular culture by the 2007 Fyodor Bondarchuk romantic comedy blockbuster Zhara. In this movie showcasing Moscow's beautiful people, a non-Russian speaking, middle-aged American tourist wearing a "USSR" t-shirt in Moscow was the butt of many jokes. After the 1990s created the popular stereotype of the Western carpetbagger, lured to Russia by the prospects of easy money and dating beautiful girls half his age who wouldn't mind his gray hair and love handles, many Russians said "good riddance" to this type of foreigner. Nonetheless, Russia and Russian companies clearly lose opportunities when recruiting foreign talent becomes a less than predictable affair, subject to the whims of bureaucrats seeking to supplement their meager salaries. In America of course, the main obstacle to more visas for skilled foreign workers is not corruption but idiotic policies.

Missing Out - Comparative Immigration Madness in Russia and America

This lament, after all, comes from a country of 300,000,000 that every year routinely exhausts its entire annual allotment of 100,000 skilled worker visas in February. The U.S. skilled worker visa system often wastes talent and productivity by leaving foreigners handcuffed to their employers for lack of another American company willing to cough up the $10k to $35,000 for a new H-1B visa. U.S. immigration law, in the form of the J-1 visa, also forces the most talented foreigners attending American universities in business, life sciences, engineering, and medicine to go back to their homelands when they complete their studies. Given this ridiculous situation, it's no wonder that China and India are booming thanks in no small part to having many American-trained scientists and engineers back home who would have preferred to stay in Austin, Palo Alto, and Seattle.

Ironically, American free market advocates making their case against America's cumbersome tax code and the second-highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world frequently cite Russia and other CIS states' flat tax regimes to prove their points, in spite of their distaste for the Putin Administration. If those hard drinking and despotic ex-Soviets can do it, they ask, why can't we do it?

Moscow today has no shortage of talented professionals from the regions who will work for less than foreigners, without the hassles of employers obtaining permits from the Federal Migration Service, which, just like last year, temporarily suspended issuing work visas this summer. Nevertheless, making it harder for Russian firms to recruit top and even mid-level foreign talent (particularly in "softer skill" industries where knowledge of Western corporate practices is more important) is not going to benefit Russians or foreigners over the long term. As in the U.S., rather than siphoning off employment, foreigners actually help create more jobs for the natives.

Kyev and Almaty - The Next CIS Hotspots for Expats?

Moscow's headhunters continue to try to lure top talent from London, Chicago and New York, but hiring in Moscow has slowed down amidst the global slump. As in the West, contract consultant positions have replaced salaried jobs at the Big Four accounting firms. Even Russians raised abroad with valuable experience and Western passports are not finding work in Russia as easily as they were last year. Kyev, Ukraine, which in many respects resembles Moscow three or four years ago, is starting to compete for expats in the highly competitive financial services and distribution/retail management categories. Is Almaty, Kazahkstan turning into the next boomtown? Stay tuned.

UPDATE: British expat blogger Copydude ("Workers of the World: Uninvite") confirms the anecdotal evidence presented here of an expat exodus with statistics from HVS, a global recruitment consuting firm. Apparently HVS recruits heavily for food service and executive chef positions in Russia, since these positions are, for now, still dominated by expats. So, the hottest job description for foreigners in Moscow today isn't investment banker or M&A specialist, but sushi chef. Kompai!

Charles Ganske is the co-founder and first fellow of the Real Russia Project and former editor in chief of Russia Blog. The views expressed here are his own.