Talented foreign residents to get favors in naturalization

Talented foreign residents to get favors in naturalization

By Park Si-soo Talented professionals will be given the chance to be naturalized even if their residential period falls short of the legal minimum of five years. Indirect investors along with direct ones will also easily earn the status of long-term residents here. Currently, ordinary foreigners have to stay in the country for more than five years to be eligible for Korean citizenship. The deregulation came as a part of a package plan sought last Friday by a state panel on policies for foreign residents, chaired by Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik. The 22-memer panel set the annual budget for the package at 330 billion won ($296 million), up 40 billion won from last year. “The number of foreigners here exceeded 1.25 million last December, accounting for 2.5 percent of the entire population,” Prime Minister Kim said in a statement. “Given that the number will keep increasing, we should set up comprehensive and systematic policies to deal with this.” The government allocated 45.6 billion won for 43 projects focusing on attracting talented overseas professionals in fields including science, economy, culture and sport. To that end, the panel said, the government will strengthen its scholarship programs for overseas students and operate a database of quality foreign workers in advanced and emerging countries. In addition, the government will issue more F-4 visas for talented ethnic Koreans from China and the former Soviet Union. Only Korean expatriates with foreign citizenship can obtain F-4 visas, which allow them to stay in the country for up to three years without having to renew their visas. The panel said over 106 billion won will be spent running 79 “social unity programs” designed to aid destitute migrants and help the settlement of those struggling with various hardships caused by cultural, linguistic and other differences. To provide better aid to immigrants in financial difficulty, the government will provide marriage immigrants without Korean citizenship with the same welfare benefits as the Korean needy. In order for interracial couples to maintain a good marriage, the government will mandate Koreans seeking to marry foreigners complete a pre-marriage education program meant to deepen understanding of their foreign spouses, families, culture and others. Around 4,100 Koreans completed a pilot version of the program last year and its completion will become mandatory this month. The obligatory program was initiated in the aftermath of the brutal killing of a 20-year-old Vietnamese woman by her mentally-ill Korean husband on her eighth day in Korea in July. The incident highlighted the lack of pre-marriage checks on personal history before marriage. 정부 `해외 우수인력 특별귀화’ 시킨다 정부는 해외 우수인재에 대해 국내에 일정기간 거주하지 않고도 귀화할 수 있도록 하는 내용의 ‘특별귀화제도’를 도입하기로 했다. 정부는 14일 김황식 국무총리 주재로 ‘외국인정책위원회’를 개최하고 이 같은 내용을 골자로 한 ‘2011년 외국인정책 시행계획’을 확정했다. 정부는 특별귀화제도 외에도 우수한 외국인 유학생에 대한 정부초청 장학사업을 활성화하고 중국 및 구 소련지역 동포 중 우수인재에 대해 재외동포 사증(F-4) 부여를 확대하는 등 글로벌 인재 데이터베이스(DB) 구축을 통해 우수인재를 지속적으로 발굴해 나갈 예정이다. 정부는 또 다양한 이민자의 수요에 부응하기 위해 (1) 수준별 사회통합프로그램 개발과 개발과정의 표준화, (2) 결혼이민자 자녀에 대한 보육료, (3) 맞춤형 지도 등 지원 확대 등의 사업을 시행하겠다고 밝혔다.

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