Citizenship on offer

Pavlopoulos indicates that long-term migrants may be eligible

Greece is considering offering citizenship to long-term residents from abroad in the wake of a series of reforms that have been made to existing immigration laws, Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos told Kathimerini.

Pavlopoulos indicated that the government is looking at ways of changing the law so that migrants who have been residents in Greece for a number of years can apply for citizenship.

«The decree on long-term residents is the institutional vehicle for giving civil rights in accordance with the Constitution,» Pavlopoulos said. «Participation in municipal and prefectural elections, when the setup has been completely organized, will be the first step toward acquisition of Greek citizenship.»

Last month, the government pledged to naturalize thousands of ethnic Greek immigrants from Albania. It is thought that as many as 200,000 people may apply for Greek citizenship through the scheme.

The Inner Cabinet also approved last month a proposal by Pavlopoulos to amend an existing immigration law to help thousands of illegal immigrants seeking legal status in Greece.

The proposed amendment is expected to result in the legalization of around 100,000 illegal immigrants who have until April 30 to make their applications. This is in addition to the 180,000 migrants who applied for legal status under the 2005 law.

Around 870,000 migrants have settled in Greece since 1991.

Many immigrants have complained about the excessive bureaucracy and cost of the process to gain resident status in Greece.

Pavlopoulos indicated that there are no plans to reduce the cost of the application process but he said that efforts were being made to speed up proceedings and to stamp out corruption.

«We have begun a concerted effort to deal with the unacceptable situation we encountered,» said Pavlopoulos. «We have changed the application forms so that they can be easily filled in by migrants. Secondly, we computerized all 54 regional migrant and immigration centers which are now online with the Interior Ministry.»

Pavlopoulos said the main emphasis is on the process being conducted electronically to make it faster and less susceptible to corruption.