Part 6 – Kozol Na Verovke Ukrayinski (“Ukrainian Goat Rope”)
© Copyrighted by Doug Salem, 2004
Olga and I used the same safety procedures we did the last time she traveled to Ukraine alone - an inexpensive GSM phone with 25 minutes of pre-loaded talk time. She called me from each departure and arrival gate – Newark, Frankfurt, and Kiev – in a kind of chain-of-custody tracking system. We had worked the call times out in advance, doing the time zone conversions, so I was ready and waiting for each call. The trip went without incident. Olga’s spirits seemed to heighten with each call, as she got closer and closer to the Old Country. I wryly recalled that, making the same trip only two years earlier, with weaker English and only half the self-confidence, she had been terrified. Olga had a come a long way, baby, I thought to myself - both figuratively and geographically.
At Boripsol Airport in Kiev, Olga got her luggage and passed through the Passport Control in record time – 15 minutes. There were only four people in front of her in the Ukrainian Citizens line. Non-citizens, however, were not as fortunate and Olga observed 50 to 60 of them queued up nervously in the “other line.” Olga reported that the area of Borispol for incoming international passengers had been re-arranged for the better. More space, less crowding, a new belly-up counter for filling out customs declaration forms, and a clearer path to the big, sliding exit door, the other side of which she had nervously waited to meet me for the first time six years ago.
This time Mom & Pop Khvorostyanov were on the other side of that door, with a 5-gallon bucket of cherries in hand (local price $3, and one of the things Olga misses the most). They had hired a car and driver for $100 to bring them six hours from Krivoy Rog and all the way back again. Mom had wheeled and dealed to get this price, which was $50 less than we had paid two years prior. A hard and steady Ukrainian July rain beat on them the entire way home. Pregnant Olga threw her first Western twist at her poor parents by insisting they pull over and wash the cherries. Pesticides, you know.
Back at home in Krivoy Rog Olga and her mom immediately set to work on the passport registration problem. The mission - make Olga’s Ukrainian international passport suitable for registration with the Ukrainian consulate nearest her new permanent residence in the U.S. per the fine print on the inside of its back cover. Mom had done some checking around and learned that the first step to accomplishing this was to get a PMZ or Postoyanoya Myesto Zhitelstva (“Permanent Place of Living”) stamp in said international passport.
The PMZ stamp constitutes permission to leave Ukraine and take up permanent residence in another country. Ukrainian law, printed on the inside back cover of every Ukrainian international passport, requires citizens who have taken up permanent residence in another country to register with the Ukrainian consulate nearest the new permanent residence. The Catch-22 is that the Ukrainian consulates in the U.S. will not register the passport of such a citizen without the PMZ stamp in it, but they won’t tell the citizens that. They simply reject the attempt with no explanation, creating their own convenient and maddening bureaucratic Mobius strip.
After chasing our tails on it with the local Ukrainian consulates for two years, we finally gave up and forwarded the case to famous, world renowned FSU bureau buster, Allah Khovorostyanova (Olga’s mom). With $150 and a load of white dress shirts from Poland Mom secured a contact at the local “Passportny Stol” office in Krivoy Rog. The shirts are left-overs from Mom’s import-export racket, circa 1997-1999, when you could make some money by traveling to Poland, bringing back a bunch of clothes, and selling them in kiosks in Ukraine. I’ve got dozens of the shirts. They have no pen-pockets, fit weird, and drive me crazy when I wear them. But I do don them occasionally to stay humble and keep the peace.
Passportny Stol are small satellite offices located in different areas of the city that have jurisdiction over the residents of those areas. The Passportny Stol issue internal passports and “propiskas” (place of residence stamps), register foreign visitors, and take applications for international passports. They report up to the city’s central “OVIR” (Otdel Vizi Registratsiy), or Department of Visas and Registration. The OVIR handle citizenship issues and process the international passport applications, which are forwarded to them by the Passportny Stol. The OVIR can also register foreign visitors.
Now everybody knows about the inefficiencies of this bureaucracy, but over the past few years an option called the “travel agency” has surfaced. A new post-U.S.S.R. “privatization” phenomena, these agencies work as middlemen between the Passportny Stol and the citizens, expediting long waits and performing miracles, but for a price. For example, you can get a new international passport in three months for only $34 by working directly through the Passportny Stol. But using a travel agency, you can get it in five business days for $130, three business days for $170, or one business day for $300. Kickbacks go both ways, between the travel agencies and the Passportny Stol, and between the travel agencies and the other government agencies from which releases or letters are required.
Olga’s requirement was more complicated, however. She not only needed a new international passport, but one with a PMZ stamp in it. No doubt a travel agency would charge exorbitant fees for that. On the other hand, Mom and Olga were on a tight schedule and in over their heads a little. In her typical FSU-resourceful fashion, Mom worked out the $150 compromise and cut out the middle-man by recruiting her own agent inside Passportny Stol.
After a few days of working the problem, Mom’s agent came back with a list of 15 requirements for Olga to obtain a new international passport with a PMZ stamp in it: 1) original and copy of Olga’s birth certificate, notarized; 2) original and copy of Olga’s marriage certificate translated into Russian and notarized, may be asked for a legal or apostille copy ; 3) petition/permission from Olga’s parents stating that they do not object to her leaving Ukraine; 4) petition/permission from Olga’s husband stating that he wants her to live with him in the U.S. translated into Russian and notarized; 5) photocopies of Olga’s international and internal passports, every page and everything must be up to date; 6) Xerox copy of Olga’s Trudavaya Knishka (log/history of employers and college attendance) every page notarized; 7) six passport photos;
one clean white file folder that ties shut with little ribbons; 9) four mailing envelopes; 10) three completed Passportny Stol questionnaires; 11) one completed Passportny Stol F-2 Form; 12) a release from last employer that Olga does not owe them any money; 13) a “Sprafka O Ne Sudemosty” letter from the police stating that Olga has not been convicted of any crimes; 14) release from the City of Krivoy Rog that Olga does not owe them any money that they may have loaned to her to start a business called a “Ssuda” a pie-in-the-sky post-U.S.S.R. initiative to stimulate private enterprise; and 15) pay six associated fees totaling $50.
Olga and Mom spent the next three weeks chasing down the various items on the list, darting about town in taxis and by foot. It was during these forays that Olga lamented to me in an email that she sincerely missed the luxury of her own car. I joked back that she had gotten soft and spoiled and it was good for her. Olga never did get to see the Passportny Stol questionnaires or F-2 Form, as their agent on the inside took care of those without her ever having to see or sign them. However, Olga thinks the F-2 form is a list of immediate family members for checking against a government data base to make sure you aren’t related to any terrorists, drug smugglers, or other such threats to The State (now Ukraine).
Time is plentiful in Krivoy Rog and taxis cheap; however, the Sprafka O Ne Sudemosty proved to be a stumbling block. Trying to get it directly from the police could take several months and they only had one, so they begrudgingly subcontracted that one piece to travel agency for $30, making the single most expensive item on their list. The release from Olga’s last and only employer also proved difficult.
In the summer of 1998, when real jobs in Krivoy Rog were as rare as hen’s teeth, Olga’s father pulled strings to get his 21-year old college-educated daughter a job as a dispatcher at “Elegant Taxi,” another post-U.S.S.R. privatization boom. Olga had helped its New Russian owner build the business from scratch, even coming up with the name “Elegant.” The drivers affectionately called her “Ooti-Ooti” over the radio because in addition to being her number (Dispatcher 22 - the first “ooti” or number “2” designating second shift, the second “ooti” designating second dispatcher), “ooti-ooti” also means “baby duckling.” If you have ever heard Olga’s tiny little, child-like voice, you will appreciate this Russian taxi-driver’s joke. Unfortunately the owner of Elegant Taxi had been rubbed out in a mafia-style hit by competitor. His successor’s wife was jealous and suspicious of Olga and ran some pretty weird interference. , but with Mom’s special touch they eventually got the letter.
Another problem was Olga’s “internal passport.” Another hangover from the old days of the U.S.S.R., the internal passport was originally used to track the movements of Soviet citizens within its borders, from republic to republic, and within republics from city to city. (Imagine taking a weekend trip to Las Vegas with your mistress and having to show and register a special passport at the airport and hotel. Even worse, the passport bears your marital status, your wife’s name, children’s names, record of arrests, and other vital information necessary for keeping you in line.) For some reason, the internal passports remain in use today. Olga tries to rationalize them by comparing them to our driver’s licenses or other “identity cards,” but I’m not buying that. They seem evil to me.
As one of the items on the PMZ list, Olga’s internal passport was woefully deficient. For one thing, the photos must be replaced at 25 years of age and 45 years of age. Olga had been living in the U.S. when she turned 25 and hadn’t bothered. Another thing she hadn’t bothered to do, was change her status in it to” married” and her last name accordingly. Like most Ukrainian mail order brides, she had come to the U.S. on a K-1, gotten married, and forgot about her internal passport because, with bigger things to worry about like the U.S. immigration paperwork, it was no longer part of her life.
Further, and also like many mothers of Ukrainian mail order brides, Olga’s Mom had taken Olga’s internal passport to Passportny Stol as soon as Olga got married to have the “Propiska” (official place of residence) stamp changed to say she no longer lives at their apartment. Why? Because of another weird U.S.S.R. hangover law that attaches a per-person rate for electricity, gas, and hot water to each apartment based on the number of propiskas, or people, registered to that apartment. By getting Olga off, Mom and Pop cut their already unreasonably high utility bills by one-third.
But now, in order for the Passportny Stol to claim jurisdiction over Olga’s internal passport to process it, she had to show she does indeed live in that apartment after all. First the agent obtained a new Propiska giving Mom and Pop their daughter back, but only for a brief, joyous moment of non-empty nesting, because then the agent processed Olga’s internal passport yet again, changing the last name from maiden to married. A photocopy of this last version was submitted as part of the PMZ application package. Olga and Mom were given the original for safe-keeping.
The last hitch to this whole internal passport straightening ordeal was the fine. Ukrainian citizens are fined the equivalent of 410 per day for every day their internal passports are out of compliance. In Olga’s case, she was supposed to update it two weeks after she got married, but she didn’t. Our marriage in February of 2000, put Olga’s period of violation and fine owed at approximately 1,580 days 0r $15,800. And herein lays the beauty and true genius of Mom’s recruiting the Passportny Stol agent. As part of the $150, the fine was miraculously waived with no questions asked.
It took Olga, her Mom, and their agent a full month to pull the PMZ package together. Just in time for them to leave for Russia to rendezvous with me and brother Andrei et al. To get around having to surrender her original international passport with the PMZ package so that she could still travel, Olga made a statement that she had lost it. Another benefit of having hired the inside agent, this explanation was also miraculously accepted. She also made a notarized request, called a “Doverenost,’ which would permit her mother to receive the new international passport with PMZ stamp in her behalf when it was finally ready.
While her PMZ application was being processed, Olga and her parents went to Russia - Olga with her U.S. conditional green card and old, “lost” Ukrainian international passport with her maiden name and no PMZ or registration with a local consulate in it, and her new Ukrainian internal passport. She used the latter to cross the Ukrainian-Russian border to enter Russia.
Olga returned to the U.S. with me a week later, departing from Sheremetevo International Airport in Moscow, using the “lost” and un-PMZ’d Ukrainian international passport with no problems and according to our backup plan should she not have received the new one in time. She left her new internal passport with Mom, who carried it back to Ukraine. Olga’s new international passport with the PMZ stamp in it came two weeks after we got back to the U.S. Mom used the Doverenost to pick it up as planned. That transaction also required forfeit of Olga’s extremely-difficult-to-straighten-out internal passport, which we were told we will never see again. “Thank God!” I said. “Bury that torture device forever!”
Olga’s mother will not attempt to mail Olga’s new international passport with the hard-won PMZ stamp in it. She will hand-carry it with her when she comes to visit us this December. She and Pop have applied fro visitor’s visas, in hopes of being here for delivery of Olga’s baby. As I understand it, I am to hand over the grandchild and Mom will hand over the PMZ’d passport.
To be continued ….
Salem Doug
(of Olga Salem’s GoEastNow
www.goeastnow.com)
Important postscripts:
You can not mail a Ukrainian passport, internal or International to Ukraine through U.S. Mail, UPS, Fed-Ex, etc. It will be either impounded or kicked back by Ukraine customs and the carrier. Olga tried sending her internal passport to Mom via UPS hoping to get a jump on their plan, but it got stopped. Luckily, and with some intervention by Mom at the Ukrainian end, UPS mailed it back the U.S. Olga had to drive over to the local UPS hub and pick it up. (I was on the road at the time and just learned of this incident.)
I do not know if it is possible to mail one in the other direction, but I assume not because Ukraine customs would once again be involved?
It seems to me there is no way American/Canadian-Ukrainian couples can completely avoid the goat rope I described above.
One method of mitigating it, which seems to be the most popular approach, would be to take the chance of the Ukrainian wife being hassled stopped trying to exit Ukraine for five years until she gets U.S. or Canadian citizenship and a U.S. or Canadian passport.
You may recall that in our case, Olga does not necessarily want to become a U.S. citizen because it would mean giving up her Ukrainian citizenship and she is still loyal to her homeland, family, etc.
Another method would be for a Ukrainian wife of an American or Canadian to obtain permission to re-enter the U.S. or Canada as quickly as possible shortly after their North American marriage, go to the local Passportny Stol, and get the wife’s internal passport straightened out as soon as possible. She will probably have to pay a fine because it takes a lot longer than the Ukrainian government’s two-week grace period for bringing internal passports into conformance to get an “Advance Parole” document to re-enter the U.S. (I’m not sure what the Canadian equivalent of an “Advance Parole” is, if any.)
Then, either by making the above visit an extra-long one, or by returning for a second, one-month to six-week marathon, the Ukrainian wife would stay in Ukraine and put together the 15-part application for a PMZ I described in my trip report.
I guess that if Olga and I had been more proactive and inquisitive about it, we could have gotten the PMZ sooner, but let’s face it we are all of us flying this thing by the seats of our pants whether we want to admit it or not.
