A proposal was made in the State Duma of Russia to ban free childbirth for migrant women. Deputy Sergey Mironov called for making it mandatory for migrants to provide health insurance he insisted.
For women — there is optional medical insurance that covers childbirth and pregnancy. Employers can also purchase it, most importantly, a foreign citizen should have the policy when crossing the border. The best way for them is to buy insurance through the offices of Russian insurance companies in their own countries. This is a normal practice in international standards. I see no reason to show unprecedented generosity at the expense of our citizens who pay social contributions by any other means, said Mironov.
He reminded that foreigners, if they have officially worked in Russia and their employers have paid insurance premiums for them for at least three years, have the right to mandatory health insurance.
At the same time, a member of the Human Rights Council, Kirill Kabanov, noted that the topic of paid childbirth attempts to ignore the “main problem”, namely the ineffective migration policy.
Lawyer Alexander Pochuev disagreed with such a viewpoint. He stated that this initiative could “deprive certain categories of people of their right to free medical care guaranteed by the constitution”, thereby infringing on the rights of future citizens born from foreign women in Russia.
Under certain conditions, children of foreigners born in Russia have the right to citizenship based on the “right of the soil”, he said.
