MINSK, 21 October (BelTA) – Head of the Citizenship and Migration Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Aleksei Begun has unveiled some statistics on Belarusians who left the country to find a job in Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, BelTA has learned.
“We are monitoring this situation and tracking the movement of our citizens through the border, taking into account that a number of states have provided certain preferences for Belarusian citizens. We believe that the situation is not critical and does not cause serious damage to national security. We do not see a significant loss of workforce,” Aleksei Begun said.
According to him, about 3,000 people have left for Ukraine since September. “We have grouped these people into various categories taking into account the number of minors, pensioners, unemployed. The largest number of Belarusians left for Poland - about 10,000 people. Latvia and Lithuania welcomed much fewer Belarusian migrants. No more than 500 people left for these two countries. The reasons why people do not return include quarantine requirements imposed by the countries. The migration trends will become more pronounced at the end of the quarter or even in six months,” Aleksei Begun said.
The official is sure that most of these people are labor migrants. “Some of them leave for work. I think it is labor migration, which means that these people will not stay abroad forever. In fact, the Ukrainians provided certain preferences to IT specialists, the Poles still provide preferences to Belarusian workers who can take advantage of simplified labor migration procedures,” he said.
The head of the department stressed that the departure of Belarusian citizens was not caused by events in the country. “Maybe certain people who had wanted to move to other countries for permanent residence before used this internal political crisis to apply for refugee status in Lithuania or Poland and very often they created an image of people who were persecuted for their political views in the territory of Belarus,” Aleksei Begun added.
