MOSCOW (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed a government-proposed bill making it more difficult to obtain Russian citizenship.
The law requires applicants to spend at least five years in Russia, pass a Russian language exam and have a job to receive citizenship. It also demands that applicants reject the citizenship of other nations to become Russian citizens.
The previous law required only a three-year residence and no language testing.
Putin, speaking at a meeting with Cabinet members Monday, said the new law should "regulate immigration in the interests of the Russian citizen, but, at the same time, not shut the door on our ethnic kin," the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
The law's supporters said the existing rules were too lax, encouraged illegal migration and fueled crime, while critics claimed that the new legislation would exacerbate Russia's population decline by stalling immigration.
The law envisages that immigrants from other former Soviet republics will have to follow standard rules for seeking Russian citizenship and be deprived of privileges they had enjoyed since the 1991 Soviet collapse.
Critics of the law accused the government of shutting out ethnic Russians living in other former Soviet republics. But government officials responded that those Russians who wanted to immigrate had already acquired Russian citizenship.
About 4 million ethnic Russians from other ex-Soviet republics are estimated to have immigrated to Russia over the past decade. In spite of that, Russia's population has shrunk by 4.3 million people since the 1991 Soviet collapse and stands at 144 million people now. The decline has been driven by a low birth rate and short life expectancy, which are blamed on broad poverty and alcoholism and the deterioration of the country's health care system.