Immigration Policy of the European Union: Legal Status of Third-Country Residents

This master thesis deals with the issue of development of the EU immigration policy and expansion of the rights of third-country nationals who have been legally residing in the territory of the Union throughout this development. The aim of this thesis is to outline the crucial milestones in the form of primary and secondary legislation that led to the broadening of the scope of rights of third-country nationals in the Union, while examining their legal status in the Union in general and in the Member States in particular. The first part of this master thesis introduces the historical background, outlines the development in context of the European Union and provides the categorisation of legal third-country nationals residing in the territory of the EU, whereas the second part of the thesis deals with transposition of European legislation into national legislation of the selected Member States - Germany and the Czech Republic - while drawing a line of compliance and emphasising local requirements that were introduced in addition to (but not exceeding the scope of limitation provided by) EU legislation. In order to be able to determine the quality and ease of fit between the EU and the receiving Member States the descriptive content analysis is employed. In the second part of this thesis it is case..