Bill to cut migrants’ paperwork
New measures on immigration are currently being drafted, including the merging of residence and work permits, and will be submitted as a bill to Parliament next month, the Interior Ministry said yesterday. The draft law will be focused on the status of some 200,000 migrants out of the 900,000 thought to be living in Greece, both legally and illegally, who have been in the country several years but have not managed to obtain residence permits. The government is proposing to abolish work permits and merge them with residence permits, thereby slashing the amount of official papers needed for the application process from 26 to 14. The system will be run by regional authorities and applicants will no longer have to submit paperwork to municipalities and prefectures. Migrants living in Greece legally for longer than five years and who fulfill certain criteria, such as speaking Greek, will have their residence permit renewed automatically. The government’s aim is, by this summer, to be able to process each residence application within 10 days.
