Ethnic demography of Kazakhstan
On the other hand, ethnic Kazakhs and Uzbeks have been immigrating in large numbers to Kazakhstan ever since the collapse of the USSR. These immigrants come not only from the southern Central Asian states such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, but also from the Kazakh dominated areas in Xinjiang and Mongolia. The Kazakh government is actively encouraging the settlement of these compatriots (known as "Oralman") in Slavic dominated North and East Kazakhstan as well as the German dominated Karaganda Region, in order to dilute the minority populations there. There is also a low intensity immigration of ethnic Slavs from the less tolerant neighboring nations like Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan into Kazakhstan. An estimated 400,000 Uzbeks have migrated to Kazakhstan in recent years
Russians in Kazakhstan
Although Nazarbayev is widely credited with peaceful preservation of the delicate inter-ethnic balance in Kazakhstan, hundreds of thousands of Russians left Kazakhstan in the 1990s due the perceived lack of economic opportunities. A number of factors contributed to this situation. Following independence from the Soviet Union, the Kazakh government adopted a policy of developing the state language that sought to affirm the ethnically Kazakh nature of the country and promote Kazakh language and culture. One aspect of this policy was the government's decision to define Kazakhstan as the national state of the ethnically Kazakh people in the country's first constitution in 1993 and again in its second constitution in 1995.