Kubanychbek Isabekov, who heads a Kyrgyz parliamentary commission for migrant workers, said about 70% of working-age residents of southern Kyrgyzstan regularly travelled to Russia and Kazakhstan to earn money, and cautioned that this trend had left some areas in the south of the country without a workforce.
"If we do not allow dual citizenship, we will lose our young people forever, because they will not want to return home," Isabekov said.
Russia recently amended its legislation to enable citizens of other former Soviet republics to fast-track applications for Russian citizenship if they have legal residency in the country. But Isabekov said most migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan were staying in neighboring Russia and Kazakhstan illegally.
Russia's Federal Migration Service also announced late last year it intended to legalize up to a million currently illegal migrants in 2006. On the Kyrgyz side, a bill proposed by former president Askar Akayev to allow Kyrgyz people to take dual citizenship has been quietly shelved since Akayev's ouster in the "tulip revolution" in March last year.
Isabekov also said the high level of migration could upset the demographic balance in Kyrgyzstan - which has a population of just 5 million - and destroy the nation's genetic stock. Most migrant workers are men of reproductive age of 19-45.
He said Kyrgyz migrant workers annually sent $300 million through bank accounts alone to their home country - or more than three times the amount the former Soviet republic gets in aid from various international organizations - and about the same amount in cash.
