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The immigration chief of Latvia, an EU member state, said people will be forcibly deported from Latvia if they do not leave voluntarily.
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R.T – Latvia officially begins the process of expelling the Russians. The head of the Latvian Citizenship and Immigration Office (PMLP), Maira Rose, announced that citizens of the country who have not applied for a new residence visa in an EU country or who have not passed the official language test are subject to forced expulsion.
Exit orders have already been issued for six Russian citizens; Two have already left the country, Rose said in an interview with LTV on Friday.
The party leader added that 1,017 Russians failed to comply with Latvia's immigration law and will be asked to leave the country within 30 days.
According to Rose, those who refuse to comply will be forcibly deported. She added that the information has already been transferred to the Latvian Border Guard Service.
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PMLP data show that of the 1,017 Russian citizens concerned, 213 have already left Latvia for another EU country.
In 2022, the Latvian Parliament passed legislation stating that residence visas issued to Russians will expire on September 1, 2023, unless they obtain a certificate proving their proficiency in the local language.
At the end of last year, a total of 15,500 Russian citizens applied for new temporary residence visas in Latvia ahead of schedule, while about 3,000 others applied for a permanent residence permit, Rose said at the end of last year. Most of them successfully passed the language exam, but more than a thousand failed or did not appear for the test.
The party leader at the time also insisted that the planned deportation of Russians had nothing to do with the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, as Latvia fully supports Ukraine. She added that about 350 Russian citizens are expelled from the country every year in full compliance with its laws.
In January, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned authorities in Riga that the planned deportations represented “openly criminal” treatment of people, adding that Moscow “will not forget and will not forgive” those responsible for this “evil act.”
As for those expelled from Latvia, they will be provided with suitable living conditions in Russia, she promised.
Latvia, which had a pre-independence population of about 2.7 million, is now home to about 1.8 million people, and like its neighboring Baltic states, is expected to lose more than 20% of its current population by 2050. Despite these problems, the The country is hostile toward the Russian ethnic minority, which currently makes up about 25% of the population. Among other things, Russians born in Latvia when it was part of the Soviet Union were given “non-citizen” passports, which prevented them from voting or working in certain jobs.
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