Number of legal migrants shoots up
Some 180,000 migrants will have braved the bureaucracy and high cost involved in obtaining a residence permit by the end of this month, according to figures seen by Kathimerini yesterday. The statistics have been compiled by the Interior Ministry, which is responsible for handling the legalization process that began last year and is due to end on April 30. According to the ministry, the 180,000 migrants who have submitted their paperwork and are waiting for residence permits will join those 500,000 foreigners already living legally in Greece. This means some 65 percent of migrants will be living in the country legally, according to the ministry’s figures. Those who went through the process had to pay a considerable amount of money. The total cost of an application for one person was 1,176 euros. For a four-member family, the cost reached 3,828 euros. The average monthly wage of a migrant living in Greece is 500 euros. Although the original deadline of December 31, 2005 was extended until the end of this month, there have been calls for the process to be made permanent. The director of the Antigone human rights center, Athanassios Theodoridis, told Kathimerini it would be a success. The ministry’s figures indicate that 50 percent of those who applied for a permit did so during the period since the deadline extension. The statistics also show that some 50 percent of migrants live in Attica.
