10,337 Bangladeshi migrants applied for regularisation in Greece last year and 3,405 were granted legal status, Schengen Visa Info reported.
The regularisation process was carried out under the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), an agreement reached between Athens and Dhaka in 2022.
Under the MOU, Bangladeshis living in Greece without documents were allowed to apply for legal residence permits. To be eligible candidates, applicants had to have a Bangladeshi passport valid for at least two years, as well as prove that they were living in Greece before 9 February 2022 and that they had a job.
Before submitting the online application on the Greek government’s website, candidates had to register at the Bangladesh embassy in Athens. The application process was open from 9 January to 31 December 2023.
Apart from the 2023 applications, 113 undocumented Bangladeshis had applied for legal residency by 15 February this year.
Meanwhile, according to the Greek Migration and Asylum Ministry’s Directorate General of Immigration Policy, more than 5,900 applications are pending.
Among them are Bangladeshi migrants who have already passed the first stage of the procedure and are awaiting confirmation from Greek authorities regarding their initial residence permit or smart card.
Greece also introduced a new scheme for the recruitment of Bangladeshi seasonal workers in 2022. This agreement came after an influx of Bangladeshi migrants trying to reach Greece through unsafe routes.
Greek authorities have taken various steps to discourage unsafe migration across the sea. In this regard, the government has introduced new changes to make it easier to obtain a legal residence permit in Greece.
Greek Migration and Asylum Minister Dimitris Kairidis said earlier this month that 2024 will be the year of legal migration.
Kairidis said recently that the migration ministry is working on a bill to modernise the procedure for granting and renewing residence permits for legal migrants in Greece. In a statement, he said:
Within the first half of 2024, four new biometric data collection centres will be opened, three in Athens and one in Thessaloniki, to free up staff.
The Minister stated that migrants faced difficulties in applying for renewal of residence permits, even though they had lived and worked legally in the country and paid taxes and contributions.
Greece plans to modernise the permit system on this issue and process 850,000 migration files by the first six months of 2026.
