Croatia – On the occasion of Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić Radman’s visit to his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in New Delhi, the Croatian daily Večernji List published an article on the issue of immigration from the Indian subcontinent.
It turns out that the authorities in Zagreb are expecting “an increase in the number of applications for long-term visas from Indian citizens who have already been granted work and residence permits in Croatia.
According to Večernji List, “the number of Indians and inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent leaving their homeland for the European Union and Croatia, both legally and illegally, is on the rise.
Last year, 17,000 applied for work visas and visas for long-term stay in Croatia, and 15,000 were granted.
In January, it was reported that 18,000 Indians had entered the Schengen area illegally via Serbia,
which is a relatively new trend that is adding to Europe’s growing burden linked to illegal immigration.”
Since 2015 and the notorious Balkan Route migrant crisis, Central European countries have all gotten tougher on illegal immigration and false asylum claims. At the same time, since 2015 there has been a marked upward trend in the number of legal immigrants in the former Eastern Bloc countries and the former Yugoslavia, and this has continued to be the case after a pause in 2020 and 2021 due to Covid-linked travel restrictions.
Croatia, like all Central and Eastern European countries, has declining birth rates coupled with high emigration.
