Ukraine - Migration

Since the breakup of the former Soviet Union, tens of thousands of Ukrainians have returned to the Ukraine. Between 1989 and 1995, 15,000 returned from Azerbaijan, and 39,000 returned from Kyrgyzstan. Between 1991 and 1995, 15,000 returned from Belarus; 82,000 returned from Kazakhstan; and 30,000 returned from Tajikistan. There were still 150,000 ecological migrants internally displaced from the 1986 Chernobyl accident. As of February 1996, 250,000 Tatars had returned from Central Asia, mostly from Uzbekistan. These Tatars belong to the 500,000 Tatars that were forcibly deported from the Crimean peninsula under the Stalin regime. The signature of an agreement between Ukraine and Uzbekistan in 1998 on the simultaneous release from Uzbek citizenship and acquisition of Ukrainian citizenship enabled more than 38,000 Crimean Tatars to obtain Ukrainian citizenship. Many of the rest of the Crimean Tatars in Central Asia wish to return to the Crimea.

Due to a series of amendments to the Law of Citizenship and a naturalization campaign, all formerly deported stateless persons residing in Ukraine had acquired Ukrainian citizenship as of 1999. The net migration rate was -2.0 migrants per 1,000 population in 2000. The total number of migrants living in the Ukraine that year was 6,947,000. The government views the immigration level as too low, and the emigration level as too high.