Prague, Sept 10 (CTK) – A group of Czech Interior Ministry’s experts will examine new applications by expatriates in Ukraine for resettlement to the Czech Republic in Kiev from September 27, Hynek Kmonicek, head of the Presidential Office foreign department, told CTK after a meeting with expatriates Thursday.
The experts will stay in Kiev for one week.
The expatriates have now again turned to President Milos Zeman for assistance.
Resettlement applications were filled as the intensity of fighting between the government forces and pro-Russian separatists in the east of Ukraine was growing afer the annexation of Crimea by Russia last year. There are already more than 1000 of them now.
Vera Dousova, representative of the Czech expatriates, said after the meeting with Kmonicek the applications to be examined were filed by about 200 expatriates who were already prepared for moving to the Czech Republic.
However, after they filed in the necessary documents, “in the latter half of August, they all got the same letter saying they are not sufficiently poor or ill, meaning that they cannot move, that they are not covered by the relevant government decision,” Dousova said.
She added she was satisfied with Thursday’s meeting.
Kmonicek said “the law is set so as to deal with a case of someone who immigrates to the Czech Republic. It logically asks: ‘Is it a political, or an economic refugee?’ But what if the answer is that they are neither political, nor economic refugees? That they are simply Czechs,” Kmonicek said.
He said the expatriates explained that “the primary reason for their return is a loss of trust in the future of their children on the territory where they have lived during the last 100 to 150 years.”
However, Czech legislation is not set for these cases, Kmonicek said.
He promised the expatriates to hand their letter to Zeman within 24 hours. He said he wants to continue monitoring the situation and that he is ready to seek a change to the system.
Kmonicek said the law should allow an expatriate family from Ukraine having secured work and accommodation in the Czech Republic to be able to move to the country.
According to daily Pravo, the Czech state registered the interest of 1119 expatriates from Ukraine in resettlement as from the end of August.
An application for permanent residence has been filed by 414 people, 151 of whom are already in the Czech Republic. They were originally accommodated in the Vltava Hotel of the Interior Ministry in Cervena nad Vltavou, south Bohemia, but many of them have already moved elsewhere and have found work.
