The Saeima Commission discussed what to do with the thousands of citizens of Latvia who also hold a second citizenship – Russian.
Where do they come from? To better understand the problem, a representative of dual citizens – Valerijs – was brought to the Saeima, who spoke about his ordeals.
"My great-grandfather was deported from Latvia to Russia during World War II," said a young man named Valerijs who appeared before the commission. "We have all the documents, the passport, we knew specifically that he was Latvian. And we decided that – we are moving to Latvia.
We gathered all the documents to do this legally. And we moved in 2016, my mother passed the language exam and received dual citizenship, and I received dual citizenship as a family member of a repatriate. Thus, before I turned 25, I had to renounce either one citizenship or the other."
– "Living in Latvia, I learned the language, I made friends, I have a family," Valerijs continues. "I realized that I do not want to leave this country. In this regard, two years ago I started the process of renouncing my Russian citizenship. I went to the homepage of the Russian embassy to see what documents were needed. I gathered everything, stood in line, but they didn’t like one certificate from Omsk, where I was born.
"I found a legal representative in Russia, to whom I granted power of attorney, they gathered all the documents for me, I stood in line again, waited, and the second time the embassy didn’t like the translation of my passport. To renounce citizenship – they needed a translation of the Latvian passport into Russian, certified by a notary. But nowhere was it written that it needed to be translated specifically at the embassy, and I had it translated by a Latvian notary and certified it."
Valerijs also tried to contact the Russian embassy in Lithuania – but there the certificate of absence of tax debts in Russia was not accepted (it did not have a blue stamp). Similarly, it was necessary to attach notarized translations of the certificate from the UDMG of Latvia about residence in the country, as well as copies of the school diploma… At the same time, the unfortunate renouncer of the Russian passport also engaged companies, to which he paid some money.
"Many people face similar situations," noted the chairman of the parliamentary commission, Gunars Kutris (Union of Greens and Farmers).
For reference: as reported by representatives of the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs, 4,231 people in Latvia currently hold both Latvian and Russian citizenship. Another 562 people possess both Latvian and Belarusian passports.
