Armenia has had various firsts in its history -- from establishing Christianity as a state religion to setting up a winery-- but now, it has scored the lesser honor of being named in a Gallup poll as the post-Soviet country residents are most eager to leave.
Based on personal interviews with 41,072 people throughout 12 former Soviet republics between 2010 and 2012, the survey found that 40 percent of the Armenian respondents would like to move permanently to another country. (The number of respondents was not provided. Online data sets reflected numbers only for 2005 and 2006.)
Moldova, at 32 percent, followed in second place.
By comparison, Armenia's Caucasus neighbors, Georgia and Azerbaijan, were far less inclined to acknowledge their willingness to seek greener grass for good -- a mere 14 percent of the respondents in both countries. Respondents in Caucasus player Russia expressed the same level of wanderlust.
Armenia long has topped the charts for labor migration; most particularly to Russia, but also to Europe and the United States. After a brief economic rally, malaise set in for good with the 2009 international financial crisis. Despite various attempts by the government to kickstart the economy, unemployment, according to unofficial estimates, remains dizzily high, at well over 50 percent.
The Gallup survey reflects that trend. Fifty-two percent of the respondents polled throughout all 12 countries cited improving standards of living as their main reason for wanting to move abroad. At 13 percent of those interviewed, securing a better future for their children trailed far behind as a reason.
If Armenia ever decided to adapt "A West Side Story," it's conceivable that “I Like to Be in America” might well be changed into “I Like to Be in Russia" to describe the choices faced by thousands of Armenian migrants each year.
But those choices are slightly less tempting now. A controversial Russian state program that grants jobs and citizenship to foreign nationals from former Soviet republics has stopped accepting applications from Armenians, Armenian news sources report.
Grappling with the double whammy of a low birthrate and a population exodus, Yerevan repeatedly has urged Moscow to stop the program, called Compatriots, which Armenian officials say has become a floodgate for emigration.
“We have a serious demographic problem in Armenia… and the organized outflow of the population is a blow to our national interests,” Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian said of the program last month.
According to official numbers, some 26,000 Armenians have applied for the program since its start in 2007; 2,500 have actually left for Russia.
Gone to the West, everyone with brains; gone to Russia, everyone with brawn, believes one prominent Armenian intellectual. (Apologies to Peter, Paul and Mary.)
But many others are not going anywhere at all, rejoined President Serzh Sargsyan at a July 20 cabinet meeting. While expressing concern about migration rates, Sargsyan also called for a cautious interpretation of the data. Predictions of a mass exodus only provide grit for the enemy’s (read, Azerbaijan's) mill, he said.
“[S]ome say 45,000 people have left Armenia [this year], but had someone taken the trouble to look at this rate on a monthly or quarterly basis, he would clearly see that in October-November period of this year… 40,000 of those who left will come back,” the president said.
Where international data is concerned, though, the numbers don't look pretty. The Central Intelligence Agency’s 2011 migration ranking puts Armenia in 186th place out of 202 countries with a net migration rate of - 3.76 per 1,000 people. That's far worse than Azerbaijan (-1.14), but a tad better than Georgia (-4.06).
The United Nations gives a similarly stark long-term view; an estimated 700,000 to 1.3 million people emigrated from Armenia between 1991 and 2009, it says.
For a country with a population of just 3.2 million, those numbers spell trouble. To keep the population in place, some critics advise that the government put reforms in place for a stronger rule of law and a healthier economy.
