Could people immigrate freely from the Soviet Union?
Answer:
There were periods when emigration was allowed, mostly for Jewish and German natives: in late 70s and late 80s.
Approximately 500,000 Jews immigrated to USA (they preferred it to Israel) in the 70s. They settled mostly in Brooklyn, NY, the place called Brighton Beach aka Little Odessa.
If you married a foreigner, you also could emigrate from USSR. I had a distant relative who settled in Poland.
Yes, you could actually buy one through the Internet and have her shipped to you...only if they denounced Communism, though.
No.
The border guards were designed as much to keep people IN as to keep foreigners out.
None.
That is the same number of people who wanted to immigrate to the Soviet Union.
Just like Cuba today, which you must know something about from your "No Che" icon, people could not leave freely.
Immigration is where people come in. Emmigration is where people leave. Immigration into the USSR was easy. Emmigration, through legal channels, from the USSR was not, though it did happen.
I love the way Russia handels their illegal immigration problems. I think we should implement that on the Mexican border.
I have an acquaintance who spent 6 yrs trying to get out in the mid 1980's. She disliked the repression and was terrified of the KGB as she sought to actually leave the USSR. When she and her husband finally managed to leave they were forced to renounce their USSR citizenship and they arrived in the US as 'stateless'.
people were allowed to travel outside of the Soviet Union but it was very very strict, my parents had to live in it and they went to Greece, Egypt and Africa all the time. But people escaped from Hungary to Austria because the laws in the western soviet union weren't enforced that much.
I know many others who left to the west and had intelligence agencies question them after they fled from the soviet union.
I wonder how safe it is for missionaries there?
Nope people could not leave freely, it was actually ironic that Marina Oswald herself managed to get out of there as it was next to impossible to get Soviet citizens out of America (makes you wonder if Oswald was secretly working for the U.S. Government cause even an American marrying a Soviet Woman didn't guarantee the Soviet Woman a passage to America at all).
The Immigration information post by website user , MyTend.com not guarantee correctness.
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