YEREVAN, JULY 25, NOYAN TAPAN. 67 thousand refugees have reveived RA citizenship from 2000 up to now. Gagik Yeganian, the Head of the Migration Agency of the staff of the RA Ministry of Territorial Administration stated about this at the July 25 press conference. He also said that since 2004, 2.9 bln drams (nearly 8.7 million dollars) was allocated to nearly 800 refugee families by the RA government through apartment purchase certificates. In the future another 220 families will get apartment purchase certificates. In the words of G. Yeganian, during the last five years 4853 apartments and private residences were built or bought for the refugees with the resources given by the donor organizations. The web-site www.tundarcarmenia.am will soon operate for promoting repatriation. It, in the words of G. Yeganian, will give an opportunity to the potential repatriates to apply to corresponding departments over the problems of coming back to Armenia. It was also mentioned that the number of those who arrived in Armenia in 2006 exceeded the number of those leaving Armenia by 21.5 thousand. Touching upon the problems of the labor migration, G. Yeganian mentioned that the RA Law On "Labor activity of foreign citizens" will come into force in autumn. According to law, in particular, it is expected to give preference to RA citizens in the issue of occupying the vacancies. "Foreign citizens will be invited only in case they do not occupy it," said the Head of the agency. The latters, according to Gagik Yeganian, are mainly involved in the spheres of tourism, construction, jewelry, as well as in service.

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