The tendency of Albanians to emigrate and stay in Greece drops significantly

2023-04-28 15:17:22, Kosova & Bota CNA

The tendency of Albanians to emigrate and stay in Greece drops significantly

Albanian immigrants in Greece

Greece is being evaluated as an increasingly less attractive country for Albanian emigration, unlike in previous years when it was the country that had the largest number of Albanians with residence permits, but also the largest number of Albanian refugees entering Greek territory without documents from the green border.

The data of the Greek Ministry of Immigration and Asylum for the first three months of 2023 show that the number of Albanian citizens with residence permits in Greece in March of this year was about 281,000, which constitute 60.1% of foreigners with residence permits. regular in this country.

The number of Albanians with a residence permit in Greece in March of this year is significantly lower than in March of 2022, where according to the data of the Greek Ministry of Immigration, there were about 419 thousand Albanians with a residence permit, who constituted 62.6% of the foreigners regularly in Greece.

According to immigration analysts, the significant decrease in the number of regular Albanian immigrants in Greece is related to several factors.

The biggest factor in the decrease of the number of Albanians in Greece is estimated to be a new tendency of Albanian immigrants who worked and lived for years in Greece to emigrate to other European countries.

The new migration of the second generation has become a phenomenon as many young Albanians are now leaving Greece for countries such as England, Germany, the Netherlands and areas of Northern Europe, following the difficulties in Greece with employment and low wages.

The decline of Albanian emigration to Greece also has a great impact on the Albanian border areas with the neighboring country. The emigrants who now leave Greece for European countries no longer return to their areas in Albania for seasonal work, deepening the abandonment of many villages, especially by young people.

Meanwhile, other factors of the decrease in the number of Albanians with residence permits are related to the procedures for issuing permits, which continue to move slowly, while a category of second-generation Albanian immigrants have benefited from Greek citizenship by no longer applying for residence permits.

The data of the Greek Ministry of Emigration falsifies a significant decrease in the first three months of this year in the irregular emigration of Albanians to Greece and requests for asylum.

While a few years ago Albanians topped the list of irregular foreigners entering Greece, according to the Greek Ministry of Immigration they are no longer ranked from January to March 2023 in the list of 10 countries with the largest number of irregular foreigners who enter Greece.

According to the data of the Greek Ministry of Immigration, this list is now headed by irregular immigrants from Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan, and irregular Albanian immigrants who entered Greece without regular documents through the green border between the two countries are in the three months of this year in negligible numbers.

According to the Greek Ministry of Immigration and Asylum, in December 2022, Albanians were ranked eighth in the list of ten countries with requests for asylum, where they submitted 1,289 requests with about 3.5% of the total of 37,362 submitted by foreigners.

Albanians constituted until December 2022 a high number of appeals after the rejection of asylum in the first instance with 1,494 requests, which constituted about 8.9% of the 16,830 appeals for asylum from foreigners in Greece for 2022.

But in the January - February period of this year, the number of applications for asylum from Albanians in Greece dropped significantly to around 80 requests in total.

Even the number of appeals for the January-March quarter of this year from Albanians who were refused asylum by the Greek authorities was only 185 requests.

According to the data of the Greek Ministry for Migration and Asylum, Albanians constitute the category with the smallest number of recognitions of asylum requests, with about 0.25% of cases.

This, since Greece for several years considers Albania as a "safe country" and there are fewer and fewer opportunities for Albanian citizens to be referred to asylum.

According to the Albanian immigrants themselves who apply for asylum, in many cases their requests are related to avoiding deportation to Albania./ VOA