Estonia: Study on practices in the area of regularisation of illegally staying third-country nationals in the Member States of the EU, Ref. JLS/B4/2007/05, Appendix B, Country Profiles of 22 EU Member States and the USA, Vienna: International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD)

Estonia has a long history of both emigration and immigration that has coincided with periods of colonization, independence and occupation. The first Republic of Estonia was declared on 24 February 1918. During the period of independence from 1918 to 1940, Estonia was already a multi-ethnic country with recognised Russian, Swedish, Jewish, German and Latvian minorities, all of which had almost completely disappeared by 1945 due to the acts of occupation regimes (Jäärats, 2008). The Second World War, a Soviet occupation (1940-1941), a German occupation (1941-1944) and another Soviet occupation (1944-1991) had a devastating impact on Estonian demographics. Until the time of regaining the independence on 20 August 1991, the population loss was offset by the Soviet occupying power via forced industrialization and by allowing and encouraging the entry of constant waves of migrants from different parts of the Soviet Union, including Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, the Caucasus and Central Asia (Jäärats, 2008). In the light of these historical events and the country’s geopolitical location (being the Estonian eastern border with Russia the external border of the European Union since 1 May 2004), the main countries of origin for immigration are the former Soviet Union countries, first and foremost Russian Federation. (...)