Support of the citizens of the Kyrgyz Republic, permanently residing abroad, in the legal, economic, humanitarian, cultural, educational and information spheres is the main task of the government’s program on the state support of compatriots for 2018-2020. The State Migration Service submitted the draft program for public discussion.
The ministry noted that due to the mass departure of citizens outside the country, numerous community groups, large diasporas in the destination countries of migrant workers have appeared there. The largest of them is in the Russian Federation.
According to expert estimates, the number of immigrants from Kyrgyzstan in Russia is over one million, and, as of 2017, half of them have already changed their citizenship to Russian. New diasporas were formed in Kazakhstan (35,000 people), in Turkey and South Korea (15,000 each), in several European countries and the United States.
Data of the State Migration Service
At the same time, none of these countries has structurally developed and large diasporal organizations, covering a large number of citizens. As a rule, existing public organizations of compatriots are created by the activists from among those, who emigrated abroad for permanent residence and changed their citizenship or obtained a new one without renouncing the citizenship of the Kyrgyz Republic.
The draft program contains four priority measures. The first is the improvement of the regulatory and legal framework. Then there is the institutional development (strengthening coordination and interaction) and development of export potential, tourism, attraction of investments, and, finally, the preservation of language, culture, development of cultural and humanitarian ties, the background statement says.
