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Comment by 62951413 | Hacker News Reader

Technically, may be not yet. I work with a developer from Ukraine whose parents are not that old. His father cannot come visit him because he is not 60 yet. But he hasn't been drafted either.

In all fairness, the Russian people had

* a chance to stop the KGB in 2000, possibly in 2004

* at least fifteen years to get another passport in a great environment before 2014

* an opportunity to oppose the war in 2014 when that didn't mean getting fired and likely jailed

* another 5 years under more challenging but still workable circumstances to run away

* half of 2022 for really desperate actions

At this point those still in the country have nobody else to blame for their situation unfortunately.

The scale of the tragedy for the Eastern Slavs is reaching truly historical proportions. The 21st century was not supposed to be like that and I don't really want to know what's next.

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> * at least fifteen years to get another passport in a great environment before 2014

Getting another passport is really difficult and expensive.

My family emigrated 16 years ago and I still can't get one. In my entire family only one of us succeesed.

Hardest country to emigrate to in Europe is most probably Switzerland (barring maybe some tiny 'states' with obscure rules). There you can apply for citizenship after 10 years of continuous habitation (which means work at least majority of the time), and you need to pass some pretty basic language and overall knowledge test.

I know quite a few Russians here, who wanted to get passport has it, its just about strong enough will and consistency. But that's something very few have, ie consistently take language courses for a year or two, learn culture, history, actually integrate into local society and not just stick around the people from same speaking country all the time.

If you have no good expertise, work hard on getting one, god damn there are countless programmes in both EU and Switzerland to become an expert in something basically for free. It may not be a CEO position but it will be a well paid honest job. Sorry but every single time I've met people complaining about this, they really, really slacked on above and just kept dreaming about superb chances for free, which obviously never came.

This may not be true about other continents, no experience there. But commenter you respond to is 100% correct for Europe.

I have passed every language and history test, my income is significantly above average for the country. But the fine print of the immigration system is what fucked me up.

For example in UK your passport application will be rejected if you were not in the country 5 years ago from the exact date the application is recieved by the Home Office. You could pay all fees, taxes, pass all tests, live in country for 20 years, but if you left for one day on Sept 1 2015 and post delivered your application on Sept 1 2020, your application will be denied.

If you spend 4.9 years on a dependand visa, but then your partner gets a permanent residency, you have to switch to a family visa, and your period of 5 years starts all over again.

Student visas don't count to the 5 year period, being outside the country for too long resets the period, for example if you had to help out aging parent after surgery.

The rules change all the time and there isn't an 'immigrant newletter - what will fuck you up at the next step'. Its usually when you try and apply for the next step, you find out you've wasted 5 years.

Also the amount of money I've spent on various immigration and lawyer fees is probably about 40 grand.

There was some bad luck and one poor decisions made, but the bottomn line is, it's easy to fall through the cracks and end up with nothing no matter how resourcefull you are.

The edge cases of immigration/naturalisation rules seem to suck everywhere.

I'm extremely privileged that my experience with naturalisation in Sweden was very smooth. At the same time I lived 5 years with some anxiety due to numerous cases of mishaps with immigration processes from personal contacts.

It includes high-skilled immigrants being deported due to a past employer not paying worker insurance, something that as a worker you're never aware of in your payslip, contract, etc. Includes couples being separated for years, waits of weeks to months for getting a permission to leave the country to care for ill relatives without affecting their process. All of it just for the sake of applying rules, not empowering immigration case agents to take decisions pending further reviews, or a justice system that is rigid on the application of rules (as was the case of the missing worker insurance, which affected a few other people).

Living with those reports from others close to me always kept me on the edge of what could happen to me, and this is a great country as an immigrant, including in terms of bureaucracy.

I can't imagine other places with much more confusing and contradictory immigration systems...

> For example in UK your passport application will be rejected if you were not in the country 5 years ago from the exact date the application is recieved by the Home Office. You could pay all fees, taxes, pass all tests, live in country for 20 years, but if you left for one day on Sept 1 2015 and post delivered your application on Sept 1 2020, your application will be denied.

UK rules often seem arbitrary or deliberately trying to trap people.

> The rules change all the time and there isn't an 'immigrant newletter - what will fuck you up at the next step'.

That surprises me: I would imagine there are online forums, maybe a subreddit, for such a purpose.

> * a chance to stop the KGB in 2000, possibly in 2004

Given how much of a shitshow shock-therapy economics were in the 90s, I think the results of those elections were completely expected.

People have spilled a lot of ink in 2016 about how MAGA rode a wave of people being disillusioned by the status quo - well, imagine that, but ten times worse, and you'll get a picture of Russia in the 90s. It leaned westwards, got burnt hard, was ready for a change, any change, and look, here comes a Russia-first strongman to make the country 'great' 'again'.

It had as much of a chance to stop Putin in 2000 and 2004 as Kentucky has to not re-elect Mitch McConnel.

> * a chance to stop the KGB in 2000, possibly in 2004

IIRC, Russia was a different kind of trainwreck in 2000, so it's not really fair to fault them for not proactively dealing with $CURRENT_THING, when it could have only been distant speculation.

Nationalism is one hell of a drug.

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