I will be taveling to Kazan in July to visit with my wife's family for a week. I am applying for a tourist visa to save time and hassle but won't be staying in a hotel. What is the best way to register the tourist visa and get the migration card stamped?
Thanks,
Dagobert2

The migration card is stamped upon entry to Russia. I always just use a tourist agency to register my tourist visas. The same place that issues you your voucher can register you, unless they've changed the law since January, which is entirely possible.

I went to Kazan in April. Registering a visa there is easy. You just have to go to any post office, fill out the form, pay a couple of bucks and voila. They will give you a receipt for the registration, but do not stamp the migration card. It's not necessary for them to stamp it - but you can try asking them to stamp it and maybe they will and maybe they will not - but in any case - they're not required to - nor do you need them to. Note that the person registered where you will be staying is the one filling out the form. They need to go with you, with their internal passport and they're the one dealing with the post office people.

The item you will need (potentially) is "visitor registration". It's different from entry stamp that you get at the airport.
There are several ways to get it:
- Buy a box of chocolates for the nice girl at the local hotel reception desk, stay for one night and sweet-talk her into stamping you for the whole duration.
- Go to your local OVIR office. This, in big cities like Saint Petersburg, is a major major hassle. Drop off papers on one day (after standing in line) and pick them up on another day. And since you're staying at a private residence you need ownership papers (privatization certificate and "propiska") from your wife.
- If you do not have an OVIR office nearby, and in smaller cities that is definitely the case, you can get stamped at the local militia HQ. Your wife should know where that is. The whole procedure takes a grand total of maybe 10 minutes. We didn't need the privatization certificate either.
- You can just not stamp it. It's a hit or miss thing and greatly depends on the duration of the stay and the mood of the immigration officer at the checkout. A week is usually not enough time to visit OVIR and they understand that. You may be required to pay a fine, amount unknown.

Being a Russian citizen (well, ex-citizen) I go there all the time using my US passport and business visas. The times I've stayed with my family in Saint Petersburg we had to go through OVIR and it was a major pain. A year ago I was there visiting my then fiance, we visited several cities and I never registered, even though I stayed for a month. The immigration officer didn't even blink. This could have something to do with the fact that I am Russian and they wouldn't hassle me, but might hassle some foreign tourist who doesn't speak Russian.

Best bet is your local militia office. Have your wife check upfront so you dont waste days waiting in line.

You are wrong. It is not a "stamp." They have changed the registration rules entirely. You now receive an official piece of paper with your name and address, and you need to have gone to either OVIR or a tourist agency that will do your registration within 24 hours, not counting weekends, or you run the risk of being fined. And it's not a small fine, either. Think thousands of dollars. And a hotel can no longer register you.

If you're Russian, you probably won't get stopped by the police, especially if you don't look military age. But it's possible that an American male tourist, especially one who could be considered chiorniy, would be. And then it would be very very very bad to not have this registration paper.

The visa registration process is a little easier than it used to be.
Take a look at this web page: "http://waytorussia.net/RussianVisa/Registration.html"

You are wrong. A hotel can register you for your duration of stay at the hotel. And its not within 24 hours of arrival either. It is 3 working days, not counting weekends or holidays. I have never had any problem with being registered at a hotel if I stayed there, and I have had very few problems getting a hotel to register me when I didnt stay there. Going to OVIR in Sochi is a pain, but I have managed to get registered there all in one day. It took 4 hours though. With the new rules, there is no stamp, you do get a piece of paper, but you dont keep it. If you stay in an apartment, the owner of the apartment must send it back to OVIR within 3 days after your departure, same goes for a family member who registers you at their flat. Sometimes the hotels will give it back to you (I assume because they are linked into the govt registration DB and do it all on computer, thus not needing to send anything to OVIR), sometimes not. They have never looked for or asked about it at Passport control in Moscow.

I believe they used to stamp you at the hotel or something, and now the hotel takes the documents somewhere else.

I was talking to a girl at lunch today who said that the person she was staying with took her registration, and apparently the girl then had some issues at passport control. She knew another girl was detained for four hours at the airport. All of the registrations of this new style that I've ever received have been photocopies with an official "kopiya" stamp on it , and it looks like a tearoff thing like the way to russia site describes, so I'm assuming that you're supposed to keep a COPY of your registration on hand at all times. It's illegal to not have all these documents on you at all times. Anyway, I picked up my new registration yesterday, and no one said anything about sending it back. The host or whatever sends the original, you keep the official photocopy.

I was just always yelled at it by the people registering me if I didn't go register immediately off the plane. When they changed the rules last year everyone was flipping out because no one really knew what to do.

I wont tell you that it didnt make me nervous not having some offical document that said "I have registered". I have also demanded that the OVIR people stamp the back of my migration card, just to be on the safe side, but no one bothered to look at it at passport control. In my four trips to Russia, and about 10 registrations (hotels, OVIR, etc) I have only recieved the copy that I carried twice. And I came all the way home with them, noone collected them at passport control.

I can tell you that at every airport I went to in Russia on my recent trip (see above) as soon as the ticket agent saw my blue passport, she handed it over to some military looking guy who looked at my passport and everything in it up one side and down the other. It was pretty clear he was looking for any excuse he could find to fine me. Fortunately, since I had my receipt from the registration paperwork stapled inside, right next to the migration card and the visa, he didn't have any reason to ask me any questions.

I told the OP EXACTLY what he needs to do - and gave a Kazan example - an extra plus since that is where he was going. OP - do what I wrote above!

Ignoring the law is just asking for trouble - and whatever trouble you get is exactly what you deserve.

Exactly. One thing I would suggest though is talking to the people who give you your tourist voucher. Laws change all the time, and what was true six months ago may not be true today. For instance, this year business visas were changed so that you can only be in Russia 90/180 days if you have one, and once you have a business visa and it expires, you need to wait several months to apply for a new one. And student visas can only be extended for a minimum of 2 months, no less. The last one only came into effect very recently and I only heard about it when I went in to extend my current student visa. So even though akdiver went to Russia 6 months ago, 6 months is ample time for a new stupid bureaucratic law to have come into effect.

FWIW, The difference between June and April is only 2 months....even in Russia.

I thought you went in January for some reason. Sorry for not updating my special akdiver secret diary properly.

But even 2 months is long enough for a law to change.

Thanks for the reminder! I forgot to update mine as well.

For private visits, the host has to go to the OVIR office and register the guest. The host gets some paperwork from OVIR. After the guest leaves Russia the host has to go back to the OVIR office within 3 days and return the paperwork. If the host forgets to do this final step, there is a nice fine.

As far as quickly changing Russian registration laws go, when you get your visa there's current instructions that accompany it, so the traveler should know the score. I use a visa company and they've kept me out of trouble.

Well gee, the law can change every day. It could even change while you're in flight on the way to Moscow. At some point, you have to hope for the best.

Ever seen the movie The Terminal! The entire government could seize to exist on your flight into Russia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminal

That's true. That's happened to me TWICE!! It's a real pain in the ###.

I've lived in Russia since 2003 and I HATE THE STUPID VISA/REGISTRATION RULES!!!!! Yes, they can change overnight and the government doesn't warn anybody. Happened to me on a trip to Ukraine. Got an email from a friend that the registration rules would be different 2 days before I crossed back to Russia. As for the new registration, it is a seperate piece of paper that is issued by OVIR (I can't remember their new name) that you must carry in your passport on your person at all times. When you leave the country you must give it back to OVIR so they can unregister you. Passport control only asks for this paper if they are looking for a "donation".

Thanks everyone for your feedback on this lively and controversial topic. At least getting a visitor's visa to Russia is easy. Don't we all wish the same were true the other way around. In this case my wife will arrive in Russia a week ahead of me so she will look into what the current rules are. The post office process sounds nice and easy if indeed it is still the process in Kazan. The last time I was there they were using the migration card stamping process along with some computer database process with the hotels. Didn't make a whole lot of sense and I ended up losing the migration card. That made for some nervous conversations with my wife-to-be and some unpleasant words from Moscow passport control but otherwise no big deal. So I guess we'll see what the game is this time. I am looking forward to the trip. It has been nearly two years since I have been there.

Be more careful with your migration card this time!!!