Many asylum seekers from very exotic countries in the region are seen as having malicious intentions 0 6

As previously reported, today a new parliamentary investigative commission has been established in the Saeima - this time to address the issues of the influx of immigrants from third countries. One of the main initiators of the commission's creation, Saeima deputy Janis Dombrava (National Alliance), outlined the situation in the migration sphere: "What are the top countries from which we have received asylum applications in recent years? Tajikistan, Afghanistan, India, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Russia. It is worth adding that over the past years Latvia has accepted more than 60,000 Ukrainian refugees, about 30,000 of whom are still in Latvia. Since the full-scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine, national security risks have only increased. This is especially true for Russian and Belarusian citizens residing in Latvia. Thanks to amendments to the Immigration Law adopted in 2022, the number of Russian citizens living in Latvia has been significantly reduced, but there are still about 40,000 Russian citizens and 4,300 Belarusian citizens in Latvia.

At the same time, Europe still faces a high level of terrorist threat, including from individuals identifying themselves as representatives of radical Islamic ideology. These circumstances create increased pressure on responsible state institutions to ensure effective control measures in the context of rising immigration, to ensure that immigrants comply with the laws of Latvia and do not pose a threat to national security, to conduct thorough checks for everyone wishing to enter Latvia, and to monitor that these individuals do not create problems in the long term. There are serious issues with the existing capacity of our institutions to cope with all the challenges already posed by the current numbers of foreigners. However, a completely different picture emerges if these numbers continue to grow all the time.