Latvia - Overview

Key Findings

Favourable
Rights associated with long term residence

Unfavourable
Eligibility for nationality
Policies for political participation
Eligibility and integration measures for labour market access
Definitions and concepts and enforcement mechanisms for anti-discrimination

Critically unfavourable (0% score)
Electoral rights and Consultative bodies for political participation
Security of employment, family reunion and nationality

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Overview
Newcomers to Latvia are mostly the family members of Latvian non-nationals (see box) who come from CIS countries. In light of a shrinking population and labour market shortages, a handful of studies and conferences have looked to the experience of Latvian emigrants in Ireland to learn from its transformation into a country of labour immigration. The Programme for Development of a Comprehensive Migration and Asylum Management System 2005-9 aimed to align EC migration requirements with Latvia's national interests. Contentious debates erupted over the transposition of EC anti-discrimination Directives.

Latvia is the lowest scoring country in two of the six areas of migrant integration policy measured by MIPEX: labour market access and political participation. Nationality policies lie third from the bottom, before AT, and anti-discrimination laws third, before EE and CZ and tied with DK and CH. Even in the highest-scoring areas of family reunion and long-term residence, Latvia's policies reach just halfway to best practice. Of the 28 MIPEX
countries, third-country nationals (hereafter migrants) in Latvia have the worst legal security as workers, family members, long-term residents, and naturalised citizens.

Pathways to citizenship for Russian and stateless residents in Latvia As in EE, most legally-resident non-nationals are not migrants who crossed an international border, but ethnic Russians who moved within the USSR after WW2 and were not entitled to Latvian citizenship in 1991. Since 1995, naturalisation has been conditional on a Latvian language and history test. In 2004, 28.8% of Latvia's population was ethnically Russian, of which 50% had become Latvian citizens, 47% were stateless, and 3% had foreign citizenship. For more, see Gelazis, "The European Union and the Statelessness Problem in the Baltic States", European Journal of Migration and Law (Nijhoff, Vol. 6, No. 3, Nijmegen, NL, 2004) 225-242.

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Integration Policy Timeline

15/08/2005
Programme for Development of Comprehensive Migration and Asylum Management System 2005-9 launched

24/11/2005
Amendments to the immigration law established criteria for detention and right to appeal

12/2005
Latvian National Human Rights office designated equality body

01/2006
"Latvia and free movement of persons: the Irish example" paper commissioned by Latvian President

22/06/2006
Transposition of EU Directive on long-term residents raised debate on status of non-nationals

01/2007
Government eased restrictions on foreign workers after pressures from employers facing labour shortages

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 Migrant Profile

Footnotes
1 Eurostat (non EU-27, 01.01.2006)
2 UN Population Estimates (01.01.2005)
3 Eurostat (non EU-27, 01.01.2006)
4 Urban Audit (non EU-15)
5 Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia
6 Eurostat (non EU-15)
7 Office for Citizenship and Migration Affairs
8 UNHCR, based on asylum applications submitted
9 OECD, Education at a Glance, 2006 (non EU-25)
10 European Labour Force Survey (2006q2)
11 Eurostat
12 Eurostat