Azernews.Az

Azerbaijan’s State Migration Service detained over 200 illegal migrants this year, with most of them being from European, Asian and African countries, according to the immigration authority.

Azad Gasymov, a department head at the migration service, told a roundtable devoted to the International Migrants Day that the illegal aliens often attempt to illegally cross the Azerbaijani border with forged visas and passports. Such instances have become more frequent at the airport. Thus, 15 citizens of Afghanistan have been detained while trying to cross the port of entry in the airport with forged passports allegedly issued by European countries, Gasymov said.

"Spanish passports were found of them, while an Afghan national detained yesterday had a forged Portuguese passport," the State Migration Service official said.

Arzu Rahimov, head of the migration service, for his part, said citizens of neighboring Turkey are among the most frequent violators of immigration laws due to the high number of people coming to Azerbaijan from this country.

"The more people come to Azerbaijan from a given country, the greater is the number of illegal migrants arriving from there," Rahimov said. "This year, mostly Turkish nationals have applied for and received permission for temporary or permanent residence."

According to the migration service head, besides Turkey, most of the foreign migrants hail from Russia, Georgia, Iran, Ukraine, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Britain and the United States.

"Pakistan and China are the countries that we are particularly concerned with in terms of illegal migration," Rahimov said. "[Most] citizens of these countries reside in our country illegally. [But] they are exposed and relevant decisions are passed with regard to them."

Rahimov said the authorities ascertained that 11,154 foreigners committed violations of domestic administrative laws in January-November 2011. 2,139 of them legalized their stay after paying fines, while the remaining 9,015 faced deportation.