ArmInfo. In 2017, 52 people applied for accommodation in Armenia - mostly residents of Syria, Iraq and Ukraine, mostly Armenians, but there are Arabs, Russians, Ukrainians, Petros Aghababyan, the head of the migration department of the State Migration Service in cases of granting accommodation to refugees stated during the press conference.
He noted that the State budget of Armenia provides refugees with room, food and all basic necessities, they are also provided with a public defender. "When receiving a residence permit, people are issued a special document, under which they have almost the same rights as Armenian citizens, in case of refusal this decision can be appealed to a higher court instance," the expert explained, adding that since 2000 , in Armenia there was a program on granting homes to refugees and forcibly relocated, since then 4 thousand people have applied for home in the republic, most of them Armenians.
In his turn, the head of the Department of Armenian Communities of Near and Middle East of the Ministry of Diaspora of Armenia Levon Antonyan noted that the majority of Armenians from Syria are not refugees. "In general, most of them are the citizens of Armenia, most of the 22,000 refugees have already received citizenship," he said, cultural and economic measures were implemented to promote the integration of the Armenians of Syria, so in 2015 they were issued very convenient loans that helped many Syrian Armenians open their business here, he stressed that after the stabilization of the situation in Aleppo, the flow of refugees decreased, and now, some Armenians are already returning to Syria. The head of the Syrian Coordination Center project George Barseghyan noted that for the most part the citizens of Syria in Armenia are not satisfied with the salary, but they have different skills that help them to get additional incomes "The center is busy with the employment of those refugees from Syria who have not yet found a job," Barseghian said.