The number of foreigners with permanent residence in the Czech Republic is increasing
The influx of EU citizens, who can settle here without obtaining a residence permit, has also increased significantly in the Czech Republic. New residents moving from non-EU countries have also increased in number.
According to Radio Prague, at the end of last year there were about 467,600 foreigners in the Czech Republic, compared to 451,900 a year earlier. In the period 2005-2008, before the global financial crisis, the number of foreigners in the Czech Republic grew; in 2008-2009 there was stagnation, which later turned into a decline. The number of foreigners moving to the Czech Republic for permanent residence began to increase again in 2014.
“Foreigners live in the Czech Republic for a long time and often tend to stay for permanent residence. They are not fly-by-nights, but people who want to live a full life here, to work,” notes Daniel Chytil from the Migration and Equal Opportunities Department of the Czech Statistical Office. “Since 2014, a new version of the law has been in effect, which simplifies the acquisition of citizenship by descendants of second-generation emigrants who grew up here, went to school, speak Czech well, and are fully integrated into Czech society. They can apply for citizenship under a simplified procedure upon reaching adulthood.”
A student at a Prague gymnasium, Sasha, also acquired Czech citizenship in a simplified manner. She was born in Belarus, but her family received refugee status in the Czech Republic. Sasha, like many of her Russian-speaking friends, attends Czech schools and speaks Czech without an accent: “I move in a youth environment, I know many Russian-speakers. And not far from my home live Russian-speaking young people, in total our group has about 25 people. We occasionally get together and do things together.”
Is 4.5% of foreign citizens a lot or a little? While every second resident of Luxembourg is a foreigner, in Poland or Romania the share of foreigners in the population does not exceed 0.5%, and the average for the European Union is 6.7%.
From a statistical point of view, the group of foreign students studying at Czech universities is interesting. Today there are 40,000 of them. Half are Slovaks, Ukrainians are in second place, Russians in third, and Kazakhs in fourth. Knowledge of the Russian language helps Kazakh students master Czech, which is very important, as providing a certificate of Czech language proficiency is a prerequisite for free education at state universities in the country.
The number of legal guest workers from Eastern Europe, in particular from Ukraine, is decreasing in the Czech Republic. There are fewer Vietnamese traders, who often leave to work in the West or Poland, finding more favorable conditions there. “The conditions for Vietnamese entrepreneurship are better there, the market is larger,” says a representative of the Vietnamese diaspora in the Czech Republic, Czech citizen Pham Hu Yuen. “Poland’s population is also larger, and there are fewer Vietnamese there than here. Perhaps that’s why competition among Vietnamese traders in Poland is not as fierce as in the Czech Republic.”
More than 60% of all foreigners living in the Czech Republic are citizens of six countries. The Ukrainian diaspora is the most numerous – 23% of the total, followed closely by Slovaks (20%). In third place with 13% are Vietnamese, fourth place goes to Russians (8%), with 4% each for Germans and Poles. 37% of all foreigners live in the capital. Vietnamese and Ukrainians who have legal grounds for staying in the Czech Republic for more than 90 days or a long-term residence permit come to the Czech Republic mainly in search of work; citizens of Russia and Kazakhstan mainly for study; Americans, according to the Czech Statistical Office, for family reunification.
Among those who received Czech citizenship in 2014, Ukrainians prevailed (about 40%), 11% of those who became citizens of the Czech Republic were Slovaks, 9% Russians, and 6% each were Vietnamese and Romanians. Over the past 15 years, 55,000 foreigners have become holders of Czech passports, primarily Slovaks and Ukrainians, less often Russians and Vietnamese.
Contrasting with the growing number of approved applications for Czech citizenship, as well as with the increase in the total number of foreigners in the country, is the low number of applicants for refugee status or subsidiary protection, which has decreased 12-fold since 2001. 45% of such status applicants in the Czech Republic last year were Ukrainians, 9% Syrians, and only 2% Iraqis. In a number of other EU countries, recall, the most significant group of applicants for international protection status were from Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq.
Czechs, however, are not going to welcome refugees with open arms. According to the newspaper Mladá fronta Dnes (referring to a January poll by the CVVM Public Opinion Research Center), 80% of respondents have a negative attitude towards accepting migrants from the Middle East and North Africa. 74% of Czechs also fear possible migration flows from Ukraine.