Prague, Sept 8 (CTK) – Nearly half of the 990 foreigners who applied for asylum in the Czech Republic from January 1 to August 31 were from Ukraine (467), followed by applicants from Cuba (106), Syria (69) and Vietnam (55), according to the data that the Interior Ministry released on its website Tuesday.
Last year, 1156 foreigners applied for Czech asylum.
Only the Syrians seem to be connected with the current refugee crisis. In 2014, 45 people from Syria applied for asylum.
Ukrainians have been the biggest group of asylum applicants in the Czech Republic for a long time. There were 250 of them in 2014. The fact that their number steeply increased was probably caused by Ukrainians of Czech origin escaping from the war in eastern Ukraine whom Czech authorities granted permanent stays in shortened proceedings this year.
The number of asylum applicants from the communist Cuba sharply increased as well. In 2014, 23 Cubans applied.
Ten years ago, the number of applicants for Czech asylum was markedly higher than now.
According to the Interior Ministry, 459,000 foreigners live in the Czech Republic, forming about 2.4 percent of the population. Over 256,000 of them had permanent residence in the country, the rest had temporary residence.
The ministry’s data show that 37 foreigners were granted asylum this year and 308 people were granted additional protection. In 570 cases the asylum was not granted or the asylum proceeding was halted. The ministry was processing 555 asylum applications at the end of August.
Number of asylum applicants in the Czech Republic in 2005-2014:
Year Number of applicants
2005 4021
2006 3016
2007 1878
2008 1656
2009 1258
2010 833
2011 756
2012 753
2013 707
2014 1156
2015 990*
*data for first eight months of the year
