Alovsat Aliyev: Azerbaijan has 30,000 undocumented migrants

In connection with the Day of Migrants - December 18 , head of the Center for Migration Alovsat Aliyev held a press conference, noting that there were unresolved issues in the field of migration in Azerbaijan.

This year, the Centre has been applied by 4,553 migrants. Most of them request help with the paperwork to leave the country .

"In the last two days, that is, after the arrest of the head of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Training Center Anar Mammadov, we were approached by 15 young people who are looking for ways out of the country. Overall, on this issue, the Center was applied by 170 people," said Aliyev .

Most of the applicants are young, educated people who know foreign languages and have received their education abroad. 41% of the applicants tend to move to the U.S. and Canada, he said.

28 % of those who leave the country explain this with the lack of conditions for entrepreneurship. 14% want to study abroad and 14 % want to get the status of immigrant.

According to Aliyev, mass migration into Azerbaijan is not available. Most of the arrivals are victims of forced labor, which mostly come from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan , and the Philippines . They are involved in the construction of the winter sports complex Shahdag. These people are victims of forced labor in companies like DIA-Holding, Pasha-Holding, Yapi-Inshaat, and Azinko, Aliyev said.

He also said the number of undocumented migrants in Azerbaijan is growing. The reason for this is a complex , multi-step way to obtain citizenship.

In Azerbaijan one can obtain citizenship after five years of residence in the country , and all the while the people live without documents and it is not the fact that after 5 years they will be granted citizenship.

In addition, 25 % of the fines deducted from migrants go to the Migration Service . It turns out that the staff of this service benefits from migrants having no documents, because they get the fine, said Alovsat Aliyev .

Currently, the country has over 30 thousand undocumented migrants and any improvement of their status or protection of their rights is not expected. -05C04-