16,500 Kazakhstan citizens receive U.S. residence permits in 9 years

Almost 16,500 Kazakhstan citizens received the U.S. residence permits in 9 years, Tengrinews.kz reports citing the statistics of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 1,202 Kazakhstan citizens naturalized in the U.S. in 2012: 664 of them are close relatives of U.S. citizens, 247 received residence via the Green Card lottery and 129 received the refugee status. In average, 1,450 Kazakhstan citizens have received U.S. residence permits annually over the past 9 years. Since 2007, when 2,072 Kazakhstan citizens were naturalized, their number has been decreasing. The total of over 1 million immigrants received residence permits in the U.S. in 2012. Almost a half of them are close relatives of U.S. citizens. Another 202 thousand received the residence visa under other family reasons and around 143 thousand received residence for employment in the United States. Almost 10.5 million people have become U.S. residents over the past 9 years. The biggest number of residence permits was issued in 2006: 1.3 million. The majority of permits in that period were issued to citizens of Mexico, China, India, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic. Over the past 9 years Mexicans have received over 1.5 million residence permits, while citizens of the Dominican Republic received 373 thousand of them. The least number of residence permits was issued to citizens of South Sudan that was created in 2001: only 17 permits. Meanwhile, the citizens of Sudan received over 33 thousand residence permits.