Expert: Migration Service of Azerbaijan keeps the number of people who refused citizenship of Republic in secret
According to observations the number of people objecting to receive citizenship in Azerbaijan is more than those who want to receive it, Alovsat Aliyev, chairman of the Azerbaijan Migration Center, stated as the Azerbaijani information agency Salamnews reports.
According to him, the State Migration Service of Azerbaijan keeps in secret the figures of how many people refused to receive the citizenship of the Republic, at the time, when in all other countries this statistic is open.
"Currently, citizens of Azerbaijan often choose Turkey, Ukraine, Russia or Kazakhstan as a second homeland. In this case, there is no need to give up one of the citizenships and receive another one. It is therefore very difficult to tell what the trend of the refusal and adoption of Azerbaijani citizenship today is," said the human rights activist.
Aliyev also stressed that there are also such people who refused to get citizenship of Azerbaijan, but was unable to obtain citizenship of another country as well. 30 people who faced a similar problem turned to the Azerbaijani Migration Center during the current year.
"In order not to have these people fallen under the definition of "stateless person", the Azerbaijani government should immediately take them back and issue identification cards. However, we do not have such a practice yet," said Aliyev.
Aliyev noted that recently in the Turkish edition of "Sabah" an article was published which reported that 15,604 Azerbaijani citizens had received citizenship of Turkey.
As a result of a major migration from Azerbaijan to Russia, in the period of the censuses between 1989 and 2010 in Russia the number of the Azerbaijani almost doubled. At the same time, the experts believe that the official census does not reflect the real picture and the total number of Azerbaijanis in Russia is approximately 2.5 million. It is noteworthy that on the 5th of July, 2012 the head of the Azerbaijani State Committee of Diaspora Affairs Nazim Ibrahimov had stated that 2.5 million Azerbaijanis inhabit in Russia. Accordingly, Azerbaijan's population is less than 2.5 million, official statistics of which practically does not consider the migration.
Most migrants from Azerbaijan arrived in Russia in 1990s; however, the flow of migrants from the republic did not reduce in recent years. So, in October 2011 the deputy head of the department of employment in Russia Ivan Shubailov noted that Azerbaijan ranks the third after Ukraine and Uzbekistan by labor migrants in Russia. According to a nationwide survey, which was conducted by the sociological service ADAM in Azerbaijan, more than 62% of the population wants to permanently or temporarily leave the country.
In February 2011, the head of the Federal Migration Service of Russia Konstantin Romodanovskiy stated that 500,000 migrants left Azerbaijan for Russia in 2011. Note that most of these workers do not officially draw up his residency, and therefore their registration is somewhat difficult. As for the people who are registered, according to the State Statistics Committee, 22 306 citizens of Azerbaijan moved to Russia in 2011, and 1,244 people left from Russia to Azerbaijan. The negative migration balance in Azerbaijan amounted to 21,062 people.