Nursultan Nazarbaev has signed a decree doubling the annual immigration quota for ethnic Kazakhs wanting to move to their historic homeland. Next year, the quota will be raised to 10,000 families per year. Officials have suggested raising the number of ethnic Kazakhs allowed to move to Kazakhstan as a means to counter the country\'s population decline since independence. The population has fallen from about 16 million to under 15 million in 2002. Nazarbaev and others have warned that Kazakhstan does not have the manpower to carry out the country\'s modernization plans. According to the Kazakh Agency for Migration and Demography, the country has accepted 270,000 ethnic Kazakh immigrants since independence, many more than the official quota, but those who came in beyond the quota did not receive government benefits. (khabar.kz)