President of Latvia Raimonds Vējonis submitted a draft law “On Termination of the Awarding of Non-Citizen Status to Children” to the Saeima envisaging the termination of awarding non-citizen status to the children of non-citizens of Latvia after 1 January 2020 and recognising them as citizens of Latvia unless the parents of the child have agreed on the granting of the citizenship of another country to the child and the child is not a citizen of another country.
“Every child born in Latvia must have a certain citizenship. The state must create the conditions that do not allow further awarding of non-citizen status, as the original aim of introducing non-citizen status has never been to keep it for an indefinite period. It was set as a temporary status for a person to acquire Latvian citizenship in time or to choose another country with which to strengthen his or her legal relationship,” noted the President of Latvia.
In the annotation of the draft law, the President of Latvia stated, “Terminating the awarding of non-citizen status to children is a symbolic step that will allow stopping deliberate divergence and purposeful division of different groups of Latvian society. Ending the awarding of non-citizen status will allow our society to become more and more connected and contribute to the development of our country.”
The President of Latvia draws attention to the promulgation of the amendments to the Education Law and the General Education Law adopted by the Saeima on 2 April 2018, which envisage the transition to mastering general secondary education only in the state language. Following the introduction of these amendments and the end of the transition period, there should be no doubt about the ability of the Latvian education system to teach and bring up diligent, decent, and responsible people who are patriots of Latvia and have a strong affiliation to the Republic of Latvia.
The draft law does not apply to individuals who were or will be born and acquired non-citizen status before 1 January 2020. Those individuals are subject to the valid regulation according to Law on the Status of the Former USSR Citizens without Latvian or Other Nationality as well as the possibilities of naturalisation and recognition as a citizen provided for in the Citizenship Law.
According to the data of the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs, there were 74 children registered as non-citizens in 2014, 77 children registered in 2015, 47 children registered in 2016, 51 children registered in 2017, and 33 children registered in 2018.