As many as 11,000 ethnic Kazakhs immigrated to Kazakhstan in 2019

NUR-SULTAN. KAZINFORM As many as 11,000 ethnic Kazakhs have returned or moved to Kazakhstan since the year beginning. This was announced by Chief of the MIA Migration Police Gani Shymyrbayev at a meeting of the Public Commission of Otandastar (Fellow Countrymen) Foundation on Thursday, Kazinform reports.

The Public Commission gathered to discuss the draft law ‘On Governmental Support of Fellow Countrymen Abroad.’

According to Gani Shymyrbayev, the amendments inserted to the country’s migration and employment legislation enabled the authorities to provide various benefits to the repatriates. For instance, granting the status of Oralman or Repatriate, abolition of the procedure of renunciation of previous citizenship, simplification of the procedure of admission to Kazakhstani citizenship for those Kazakhs studying at the universities regardless of the period of living in the country.

As a result of these measures, many Kazakhs immigrated to Kazakhstan from other countries and received citizenship. In his words, 1, 057,537 foreigners received Kazakhstani citizenship over the years of independence. 937,663 of them are the ethnic Kazakhs. In the reporting period of 2019, 13,034 foreigners have been admitted to Kazakhstani citizenship. 10,790 of them are the ethnic Kazakhs. Most of them came from Uzbekistan - 6,216 people, China - 4,092 people and Kyrgyzstan - 551 people.