Foreigners in the CR

This is the seventh publication in the series ‘Foreigners in the Czech Republic’ of the Czech Statistical Office, which follows the first brought out in December 2001.

The book updates and expands data on foreigners in the Czech Republic, focusing comprehensively on current data on foreign citizens who chose the Czech Republic to be their place of permanent or long-term residence, have found jobs or performed business activities there and those who came to the Czech Republic to escape political persecution or a severe economic situation in their countries. Data for the year 2006, frequently supplemented with time series of data for the previous years make a focal point of this publication. Since there is not enough space in printed version of this publication, data for all years, for which they are available, are not included in tables containing time series. The whole time series can be found at the CZSO website:

Similarly to the publications brought out before the information presented in this book was gained from the information systems administered by the Ministry of the Interior of the CR, Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs of the CR, Ministry of Industry and Trade of the CR, Ministry of Justice of the CR, Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport of the CR, and Ministry of Health of the CR, and the Czech Statistical Office, and coordinated by the editorial board composed of representatives of the above-mentioned departments. Publishing of this book is instigated by the Minister of Labour and Social Affairs´ Commission for the Integration of Foreigners.

In view of repeated editions the last publications are of considerable stable lay-out, the most significant changes compared with the previous year were done in Chapter 3 which was supplemented by many new graphs, e.g. on employment of foreigners in regions or selected districts, included are also structures of citizenships for both types of economic activity of foreigners by CZ-NACE, as well as the information describing the situation of economically active foreigners in the CR broken by the top citizenships.

Group of foreigners, on whom records are available in individual information systems, differs one from another; it is quite difficult to create a complex picture about foreigners from such non-homogeneous sources. It is not a wilful complicating of orientation in information about foreigners; this situation is caused rather by the fact that individual information sources are modified for the needs of the relevant ministry, at which they were made, and the process of harmonization of data sources with regards to mutual comparability is only in the beginning and is in no case easy. To make it clearer what foreigners individual tables provide information on, please see a summary table on the next page (numbers of tables relate to this year’s issue of the publication).

Should there be any comments as to the contents and form of the publication, now is the right time to inform us about them so that we can take them into account while preparing another issue of the publication.

The publication is provided free to libraries, schools, research institutes and non-government non-profit organizations and institutions. The information it contains is also designed for members of Parliament and the Government of the Czech Republic as well as for central and local governments, journalists, and all citizens of the Czech Republic.

Prague, 2007