Sarkisian referred to the Russian government’s Compatriots program that offers employment, accommodation and financial benefits to married residents of former Soviet republics willing to settle in Russia. It is designed to address the country’s serious demographic problems.
The Russian Federal Migration Service (FSM) began operating the program in Armenia in 2009 and has reportedly attracted hundreds of Armenian families since then.
Its activities are sparking a growing uproar from local opposition politicians, public figures and media worried about the continuing outflow of people from Armenia. Some of them have demanded that the authorities in Yerevan ban the FSM scheme in Armenia.
According to Sarkisian, the authorities share those concerns. The prime minister said President Serzh Sarkisian instructed him to raise the matter at a recent meeting of a Russian-Armenian inter-governmental commission on bilateral cooperation that was held in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.
“We brought our Russian partners’ attention to the fact that that program must not be implemented in the Republic of Armenia with those standards,” said Tigran Sarkisian. “This issue will be the subject of inter-governmental discussions.”
“We have to solve this issue at the political level,” he told a group of prominent Armenian writers, academics and other intellectuals at a meeting held in Oshakan, a historic village in central Aragatsotn province.
Some of those intellectuals signed earlier this month an open letter to the government urging it to do more to keep Armenians from leaving their country for mainly economic reasons. They echoed opposition claims that the scale of the emigration has increased of late.
President Sarkisian disputed those claims this week at a special meeting with top state officials, including the prime minister, that discussed the issue. He said most of the tens of thousands of people leaving the country each year, mainly for Russia, are seasonal workers that eventually return home.
Serzh Sarkisian admitted at the same that a lack of economic opportunities and the resulting emigration remains a serious problem in Armenia. He instructed government bodies to propose more measures to tackle it.
Armenia had about 4 million residents by the time the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. At least one-quarter of its population has since emigrated in search of employment abroad.