Thousands of ethnic Armenians from Syria have applied for Armenian citizenship since the outbreak of the bloody unrest in the Middle Eastern country, immigration officials in Yerevan revealed on Wednesday.
Armen Hakobian, deputy head of the Department on Passports and Visas at Armenia's national police, told RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) that the immigration service received more than 3,000 such applications last year and more than 1,500 of them in the first quarter of this year. He said only 422 Syrian nationals filed such requests in 2010.
Hakobian confirmed that Syrians of Armenian descent account for the vast majority of the applicants. According to Artur Sahakian, another senior official at the police department, some 300 of them have been granted Armenian residency permits in the last two years.
Armenian News
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