Vietnamese the second largest group naturalized in Norway

Previous Vietnamese citizens make the second largest group that has been granted Norwegian citizenship since 1977, according to the latest figures released by Statistics Norway.
     Since 1977 – which is the first year that Norway has statistics on naturalizations – and until 2002, a total of 13,009 Vietnamese have been given Norwegian citizenships. The largest group by previous citizenship that has obtained the Norwegian naturalization was Pakistanis (14,953 people).
     In 2002, however, the number of Vietnamese who became new Norwegians was more than halved from the earlier year, reducing from 594 to 292.
Previous Thai citizens who got Norwegian citizenships in 2002 amounted to 257, reducing from 302 in the year before. The year 2002 meanwhile saw more Filipinos getting Norwegian nationality than they did 2001, increasing to 299 from 261.
     A total of 9,041 Norwegian citizenships were granted in 2002, which made 1,797 fewer new Norwegian citizens than the year before. This is the second lowest figure since 1994. The decline was mainly due to the fact that fewer Bosnians and Yugoslavs were granted Norwegian citizenships in 2002 compared to 2001 because of the high figures of naturalization from these citizen groups in 2001.
     Norway has since 1977 until the end of 2002 granted altogether 147,357 Norwegian citizenships.
     As a main rule today, a person who has the right to change the citizenship into Norwegian should be resident in Norway for 7 years. Those married to a Norwegian citizen only have to live in Norway for 4 years to get the right.

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