Contents	1. Demographic aspects of the foreigner's life

Definition of the foreigner’s residence in the CR

Residence of foreigners in the CR is governed by the Act No. 326/1999 Sb., on the Residence of Foreigners, and partially also by the Act No. 325/1999 Sb., on Asylum, as last amended.

Pursuant to the law, such a person is deemed to be a foreigner, who does not have Czech citizenship (or none of his/her citizenships is Czech). The acquisition and loss of citizenship of the CR is governed by the Act No. 40/1993 Sb., on the Acquisition and Loss of Czech Citizenship, and further by the Act No. 193/1999 Sb., on citizenship of some of the former citizens of the Czechoslovakia.

The issue of the foreigner’s entry, residence and exit from the CR is dealt with by the Police of the CR, the Ministry of the Interior of the CR, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the CR. The foreigner may reside in the CR temporarily or permanently. On the grounds stipulated by the law, the Police can refuse to grant the foreigner a residence visa (temporary or permanent). Reasons for not granting a visa or other residence permit (both temporary and permanent) are determined by law.

The categories of foreigners residing in the CR are as follows:

A. Citizens of member states of the EU, norway, switzerland, iceland and liechtenstein (abbreviated as “EU citizens“) and their dependants

Dependants of EU citizens (by virtue of Section 15a of the Act No. 326/1999 Sb., on the Residence of Foreigners on the Territory of the Czech Republic, and on Change of Some Acts, as last amended) have special residence set of conditions (chapter IV of the Act No. 326/1999 Sb.) only provided that the EU citizen stays on the territory on the basis of a special residence permit or applies for such a permit.

1. Citizens of EU Member States registered not having temporary or permanent residence permit and their dependants

2. Citizens of EU Member States and their dependants having temporary residence permit (it is a claim permit or rather a confirmation on residence, which should make more easy for EU citizens to deal with authorities and a stay in the CR within this confirmation is included in the period decisive for the application for permanent residence permit)

3. Citizens of EU Member States and their dependants having permanent residence permit (EU citizen is granted a permanent residence permit provided that he/she is employed on the territory and stays in the CR continually for the period of at least 3 years). A residence permit card for a national of a Member State of the European Community is in case of the permanent residence permit issued with the period of validity for 10 years (Section 87m paragraph 3 letter f) of the Act No. 326/1999 Sb.). A dependent of the EU citizen is granted a residence permit card with the same period of validity as the period of validity of the card granted to the EU citizen (Section 87m paragraph 4 and Section 87s of the Act No. 326/1999 Sb.)

B. CITIZENS OF COUNTRIES OUT OF THE EU (ABBREVIATED AS „CITIZENS OF THIRD COUNTRIES“)

4. Citizens of third countries staying in the CR for a short time (generally up to 90 days) without visa (it applies to citizens of those countries with which the CR has concluded an agreement on visa-free relations). A foreigner can stay on the territory without visa not only on the basis of an international agreement but also based on the CR Government Regulation (and in some other cases determined in Section 18 of the Act No. 326/1999 Sb.)

5. Citizens of third countries staying in the CR based on short-term visas up to 90 days (it applies to citizens of those countries with which the CR has not concluded an agreement on visa-free relations)

6. Citizens of third countries staying in the CR based on visa over 90 days (visas of this type cannot be prolonged any more; maximum validity of that visa is 1 year; it is followed by a long-term residence permit dealt with in the following part; in the UN Recommendations on Statistics of International Migration of 1998 a stay lasting 3 months up to 1 year is considered to be a short-term stay, which does not establish a change of a person’s country of habitual residence. Thus, this category is included in variants - see further)

7. Citizens of third countries having long-term residence permit (a permit following the visas over 90 days; it is granted for the period of 1 year and after this period passes it can be prolonged)

8. Citizens of third countries having permanent residence permit (permanent residence can be applied for (i) generally after ten years of continuous residence for visa over 90 days or long-term residence permit in the CR without any other conditions or (ii) after 8 years of residence provided that the foreigner applies for a permanent residence for the purpose of cohabitation with his/her dependant, who has already granted a permanent residence in the CR; (iii) after 5 years of residence, provided that he/she did not succeed with the asylum application in the CR and comes from a country, which is not on the list of the so-called safe countries or he/she was included in the “Pilot Project Active Selection of Qualified Foreign Workforce”; (iv) regardless the length of the previous residence, provided that he/she applies for the permanent residence for the purpose of cohabitation with his/her dependant, who is a citizen of the CR having permanent residence in the CR or in the case of humanitarian or other reasons deserving a special respect)

Pursuant to Section 65 paragraph 1 letter a) of the Act No. 326/1999 Sb., the permanent residence is granted only to some dependants of citizens of the CR. Provided that they are dependants in the sense of Section 15a of the Act No. 326/1999 Sb., the permanent residence permit is granted to them pursuant to Section 87e paragraph 1of the Act No. 326/1999 Sb.

9. Foreigners with current asylum (successful asylum seekers staying in the CR; valid asylum corresponds to the permanent residence permit as for the rights and duties)

C. FOREIGNERS REGARDLESS THE EU BORDERS

10. Registered asylum seekers (it is not possible to forbid to EU citizens to apply for asylum)

11. Foreigners staying in the CR within temporary protection (based on the Act No. 221/2003 Sb., on temporary protection of foreigners, and based on CR Government Regulation or the EU Council Decision; it is a measure during exodus due to an armed conflict, natural disaster or systematic violation of human rights in the country of origin, which should protect the exiles and provide them with a temporary protection until the critical situation ceases to exist. These persons occur in tables of this chapter, because temporary protection and sufferance are recorded and reported within long-term residence permits by the Alien Police)

12. Foreigners staying in the CR illegally (e.g. foreigners staying in the CR after their visas and residence permits expire or without necessary visas or permits and the like).

Czech citizenship

Acquisition and loss of Czech citizenship is regulated by Act No. 40/1993 Sb., on the Acquisition and Loss of Czech Citizenship, as last amended by Act No. 413/2005 Sb., and Act No. 193/1999 Sb., on the Citizenship of Certain Former Czechoslovak Citizens.

Under the Act No. 40/1993 Sb., Czech citizenship is acquired by birth (Section 3), adoption (Section 3a), determination of paternity (Section 4), finding on the territory of the CR (Section 5), declaration (Section 6 or 18a), and granting (Sections 7 to 12).

A child acquires Czech citizenship, if one or both parents are Czech citizens or, if both parents are stateless persons (hereinafter referred to as “the homeless” too), at least one of them holds a permit for permanent residence on the territory of the CR and the child is born thereon.

A child whose one or both adoptive parents are Czech citizens acquires Czech citizenship on the day the decision on adoption comes into force.

A child born outside marriage, whose mother is a foreign citizen or a homeless person and whose father is a Czech citizen, acquires Czech citizenship on the day of affirmative declaration of paternity determination by both parents, or on the day the decision on paternity determination comes into force.

A person under 15 years of age found on the territory of the CR is a Czech citizen, unless he/she is proven to have acquired citizenship of another state by birth.

A person, who was a citizen of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic as at 31 December 1992 and was neither a Czech citizen nor a Slovak one, is allowed to choose Czech citizenship by declaration.

Czech citizenship can be granted to a person at his/her request, provided he/she fulfils all of the following conditions at the same time:

- the person has had her permanent residence on the territory of the CR permitted for a minimum of five years as at the day his/her application is filed and has mostly been staying thereon over this period;

- the person will prove that by acquiring Czech citizenship he/she will lose or has lost his/her original citizenship, unless he/she is a homeless person or a person who were granted asylum;

- the person was not lawfully convicted of a deliberate criminal offence during last five years;

- the person will demonstrate the command of Czech language.

Act No. 193/1999 Sb., on Czech citizenship of some of the former Czechoslovak citizens, enables to acquire citizenship of the CR more easy (by declaration and without the condition to be preceded by the residence) for countrymen, who in the years 1948-1990 were deprived of the citizenship of the CR due to emigration - they were released from the state bond of the republic.

Contents of Chapter 1

In this chapter you can find categories of persons, which were marked in bold in the beginning of the text.

The CZSO obtains data on the number of foreigners from various sources: the Alien and Border Police provides data on permitted residences and visas over 90 days; data on asylum seekers are provided by the Asylum and Migration Policies Department of the Ministry of the Interior of the CR; data on Czech citizenship granted come from the General Administration Department of the Ministry of the Interior, which are presented in Tables 1-9. and 1-15. The last data source for Chapter 1 is demographic statistics - data on demographic events of foreigners (marriage, birth, abortion, divorce, death and migration), which are in Table 1-14. and some graphs included in the Chapter.

In contrast to previous years, the order of tables in the entire chapter has been changed. Tables in the beginning of the chapter (i.e. 1-1. to 1-3.) result from the number of foreigners, which is published by the Directorate of Alien and Border Police of the Ministry of the Interior of the CR. By further processing of the data, the Czech Statistical Office produces the following tables (i.e. 1-4. to 1-13.); it means that into the total number of foreigners are included (according to the requirements of international definitions) besides foreigners in the register of the Directorate of Alien and Border Police also those foreigners, who had valid asylum in the CR as at the relevant date. Those tables then depict the total number of foreigners (foreigners in the register of the Directorate of Alien and Border Police plus foreigners with currently valid asylum) and possibly mention numbers of foreigners with the so-called residence permit (i.e. the total number of foreigners including asylum holders excluding foreigners holding visa over 90 days - those persons do not fulfil the condition of the length of the stay over 1 year as it is required by international definitions). The table that follows (1-14.) shows demographic events of foreigners, and the last table in this chapter (1-15.) focuses on foreigners, who obtained the citizenship of the CR.

Double lines between columns mean a key change of legislation or a statistical definition: The first key change occurred in 2000 from legislative point of view (the new Act on the Residence of Foreigners became effective). While until that time the law distinguished among permanent, long-term (over 180 days) and short-term (up to 180 days) residence since the beginning of 2000 what ceased to exist in law was the term long-term residence and long-term residence permit was replaced by visa over 90 days.

Another change followed the year after - in 2001 - a change of statistical definition of population. Following the UN Recommendations on Statistics of International Migration and the Population and Housing Census the population of the CR started to include also asylum seekers and foreigners staying in the CR for visa over 90 days, the length of stay of whom did not exceed 1 year (up to that time the population of the CR consisted only of individuals with permanent residence on the territory).

The last substantial change - this time both in legislation and definition - took place in 2004. Legislative changes related mainly to the accession of the CR to the EU (it was necessary to define two categories of foreigners with different residence set of conditions in relation to the EU law in the area of free movement of persons). Current legislation for residence conditions is summarised in the first part of this Chapter. The definition changed for the range of individuals included in the population of the CR based on reproaches of representatives of the EU institutions regarding the existence of double mutually non-convertible data on the number and structure of foreigners and also due to the extended possibilities of the new information system of the Alien and Border Police of the CR - CIS.

Table 1-1. includes data from the Alien Police of the CR and with precisely the same data it is published in the regular Report on Migration of the Ministry of the Interior of the CR. The Table does not include asylum seekers. The term “long-term stays” as provided by the Alien and Border Police of the CR as at 31 December 2005 includes stays marked in the list by No. 2 (temporary residence of EU citizens or their dependants), No. 6 (residence of third-country citizens for visas over 90 days), No. 7 (long-term residence of third-country citizens) and No. 11 (residence within temporary protection). In previous years mentioned in the Table (i.e. before 2004) the term “long-term stays” relates only to stays for visas over 90 days (until 1999 to stays for long-term visas).

Tables 1-2. and 1-3. contain numbers of foreigners registered by the Alien Police of the CR; thus, the tables do not include foreigners with currently valid asylum in the CR.

Tables 1-4. and 1-5. are the most general summary of basic types of residencies of foreigners in the CR and at the same time they contain numbers and shares of foreigners namely with those types of residencies as at the relevant date and relationship to the population of the CR.

Tables 1-1., 1-4., 1-5., and 1-15. contain data for a longer period. The time series available for these tables is longer than it was possible to put to the paper version of this publication. On the website of the CZSO, at the link corresponding to the publication Foreigners in the Czech Republic

it is possible to find data for previous years as well as an electronic form of other tables.

Table 1-6. is a kind of a bridge between the data of the Alien and Border Police and data modified for statistical purposes (with extending information by the variable “gender”). This Table contains namely an analysis of the difference between data published by the Alien Police and statistical data made close to international definitions on the number of foreigners in the CR. Categories of individuals are broken down in details by individual citizenship.

Tables 1-9., 1-10., 1-12. and 1-13. are contained in the publication in two variants. Firstly, for foreigners in total (i.e. foreigners mentioned above under No. 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 11, i.e. foreigners with permanent, temporary, long-term residence, foreigners staying in the CR within a temporary protection, foreigners with currently valid asylum and also foreigners with visa over 90 days), and secondly, for foreigners included in the population of the CR (so-called foreigners with residence permit; No. 6 excluded - stay of third-country citizens for visas over 90 days).

The number of long-term or permanently residing foreigners in the CR according to the Alien and Border Police exceeded in 2005 the amount of 280 thousand. About 40% of these foreigners have permanent residence in the CR. Among foreigners in total there are 40% of women (almost 50% share of women is among foreigners with permanent residence, among others women make only 35%). The number of permanent residences is gradually increasing since the beginning of 1990´s. The development of long-term stays fluctuates depending mainly on legislative changes. The decrease of the number of foreigners with the long-term stays between 31 December 1999 and 2000 can be explained by the adoption of the Act No. 326/1999 Sb. on the Residence of Foreigners.

There are 2.7% of foreigners in the CR (2.5% of the population are foreigners, who are included in the population of the CR). As at 1 January 2004 (for comparison with other EU Member States) foreigners with permanent and long-term residence (provided that their stay in the CR lasts more than 1 year) and persons, who were granted asylum in the CR, are part of the CR’s population (193 480 individuals) made about 1.9% of the population. With such a share of foreigners in the population the CR belongs (among the countries for which the data are available) rather among countries with low share of foreigners (e.g. together with Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, and Slovakia). Another group (with the share between 4-7% of foreigners in the population) consists of Ireland, the remaining Scandinavian countries, France, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Italy. Between 8-10% of foreigners in the population are reported by Austria, Germany Cyprus, Greece, Spain, and Belgium, over 20% are in Estonia and Switzerland, almost 30% of foreigners are in Latvia, and the biggest share of foreigners can be found in Luxembourg (over 60%).

Age structure of foreigners staying in the CR for more than 1 year (either all foreigners or foreigners with residence permit) substantially differs from the age structure of the population of the CR, which can be explained mainly by economic reasons foreigners have for coming to the CR (to earn their living). Big are mainly age groups in junior productive age (20-39 years) - in that age span there was more than a half of all foreigners. On the contrary, very small shares in comparison with the structure of population of the CR can be found among children and those in the post-productive age.

Foreigners cannot possibly be spoken of as “unified mass” of persons with the same reasons for coming and the same plans for the future. The main differentiating features are: gender (women are coming more often to join their husbands – reunification of the family) and, most of all, the citizenship. The biggest share of foreigners (more than 30%) was represented as at the end of 2005 by citizens of the Ukraine followed by citizens of Slovakia (17.7%), Viet-Nam (13.2%), Poland (6.4%), and Russian Federation (5.9%). Each of the citizenships is specific by its share of persons with permanent and long-term residence as well as of women and men. More than a half of permanent residencies are among citizens of Poland and Viet-Nam (both almost 65%). On the other hand, the lowest share of permanent residencies can be found (among 5 most often citizenships) among citizens of the Ukraine; as at 31 December 2005, only 17% of them had permanent residence. From citizenships with higher number of individuals, a higher number of women than men was reported for citizens of Mongolia (65.0%), Belarus (57.4%), Kazakhstan (56.8%), and Russian Federation (52.7%), while much more men than women (between 70-85%) were among citizens of Italy, United Kingdom, Austria and Germany.

The most often purpose of residence of foreigners is employment, this purpose of residence is evidently often mainly among men (residence for the purpose of employment was among more than 45% of men); another important purpose of residence is joining the family, which is, on the contrary, much more often among women (more than 35% of women). Further, many foreigners had purpose of stay in order to make business under the trade licence or for the purpose of settlement (based on a permanent residence permit).

Foreigners in general are concentrated in Prague and the Středočeský Region; further, a rather huge amount of them are staying in bigger towns and industrial areas. Differences exist also as for placing of foreigners by citizenship. Citizens of countries neighbouring with the CR are concentrated, in general, near to the borders of the CR with the relevant country. Citizens of the Ukraine are mainly in Prague, the Středočeský Region and the Jihomoravský Region, citizens of Viet-Nam are settled usually near to the Czech-German borders and citizens of Russian Federation are mostly in Prague, the Středočeský Region and the Karlovarský Region.

 

Published: 31.10. 2006
The data are valid as of the release date of the publication.