33 Countries of Origin’ Profiles

21 more refugees than all other countries combined. About 1.8 million of the two million residents of Kosovo before fighting began were ethnic Albanians. Many reports compared the Kosovo refugee situation to that of Bosnia. In the spring and summer of 1992, over 750,000 Bosnians fled from attacking Serbs. About 350,000 Bosnians moved to Germany, and Germany spent $11 billion caring for them until they began to trickle back to Bosnia after the 1995 Dayton peace agreement. By April 1999, about 80,000 Bosnians remained in Germany. Bosnians in the US are concentrated in Chicago and St. Louis. The Kosovo conflict prompted thinking about "permanent refugees." The UNHCR has traditionally thought of three solutions for refugees: "going home, being locally integrated, or being resettled" in a third county. The Geneva-based International Organization on Migration (IOM) and the Vienna-based International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) released a report on Kosovar migration that concluded that about half of the 400,000 persons displaced by the conflict had left the province before NATO airstrikes began in March 1999. Most went to other nations of the ex-Yugoslavia. Some of those fleeing Kosovo used smugglers to get into Western Europe, traveling to Hungary and then across the Slovak and Czech Republics to Germany. Germany apprehended three times more Kosovo Albanians attempting to cross the German-Czech border in the first half of 1998 than in the same period of 1997. Almost half of the attempts to enter Switzerland illegally on the Italian-Swiss border during the first half of 1998 were by Kosovo Albanians or Albanians. The report noted that about 40 percent of the Bosnians who fled to Western Europe have returned to Bosnia since the signing of the Dayton Peace agreement in December 1995; most of those who returned went back to areas in which their ethnic group is predominant. As Kosovars streamed into Albania in April 1999, some made their way to Vlore, a city of 90,000 from which people and goods are smuggled to Italy, 42 miles away. The smuggling business developed after the collapse of communism in Albania in 1991, first taking Albanians, then migrants from around the world, into Italy in high-speed boats. Most of the boats are equipped with several engines, and can take 30 to 40 migrants to Italy in 60 to 90 minutes at a cost to the migrants of $500 to $1,000 each. Italy is financing efforts to reduce the smuggling, and the high-speed boats are no longer openly moored in the bay at Vlore. On March 24, Greek officials boosted security along Greece's northern borders with Albania and Macedonia to head off an expected wave of refugees following the air strikes on Serbia. Greece, though a NATO member, will not participate in any direct military action against Serbia.