64,910 Legal Immigrants in Athens

The number of legal immigrants from Asia and Africa that have received a residence permit rose to 64,190, according to the central database of the Greek Ministry of Interior. This new data was part of the Greek Minister of Interior, Yiannis Michelakis’, written response to the House of Parliament on January 13. Meanwhile, according to the documents sent by Deputy Finance Minister, Christos Staikouras, there is a significant revenue shortfall of around 40 million euros that mostly concerned the issuance and renewal fees for immigrant residence permits which are granted by the devolved administrations. The data and documents were presented to the Greek Parliament after 19 SYRIZA Parliament Members questioned the unjustified delay of immigrant naturalization. The SYRIZA MPs that addressed the Ministries of Finance and Interior, also requested to know the number of citizenship and naturalization requests that were filed during the years 2012 and 2013. Yiannis Michelakis responded by citing the Law number 4018/2011. As the Minister of Interior said, this law aims for the optimal operation of Immigration Services in Greece and the faster processing of requests for issuance and renewal of residence permits.

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