Translation: Latvia Allows Double Citizenship… Except for Russians

This about Society, tagged , , , was written by for on May 20, 2013

The Latvian President has signed a law allowing Latvians to have double citizenship with other countries… except Russia. Moscow cries foul and calls on the EU to take action. Maria Efimova has the story.

Latvia Signs a Citizenship Law

Latvian President Andris Bērziņš signed the law “On Citizenship,” adopted by the Sejm on 9 May. This law allows Latvian citizens to have passports from other countries. Russia is not included in this list. Going against the recommendations of international organization, the law likewise doesn’t include the automatic conferral of Latvian citizenship to the children of “non-citizens,” which would have set a prospective endpoint to the phenomenon of “non-citizenship.” Moscow considers the law discriminatory, calling it an “ethno-political experiment” that is “unprecedented by modern European standards.”

According to the document signed by President Bērziņš, the list of countries whose citizenship can be obtained without loss of the Latvian passport include the member states of the European Union, NATO, the European Free Trade Association, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and some other countries with which it has agreements on double citizenship. Russia, the other countries of the CIS, and Israel are not on the list.

In addition, the law tightens the naturalization rules: People older than 45 now have to prove that they were permanently resided in the country for the past five years.

Although the new version of the law doesn’t provide for the automatic acquisition of citizenship for the children of non-citizens, as recommended by international institutions – including the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights and OSCE’s High Commissioner on National Minorities – the procedure for doing this was simplified. Now, citizenship can be granted at the request of one of the parents right after birth.

The law was signed by President Bērziņš despite the request of the biggest opposition group Harmony Center, which represents the interests of Latvia’s Russophone residents, to return it to the Sejm for further work. However, according to ITAR-TASS, the President soon after the signing of the law sent a letter to parliament calling for its further improvement, so that the list of states with which Latvians are allowed to have double citizenship can be expended in the future.

“The Latvian authorities continue to exacerbate the self-created problem of mass non-citizenship, which is unprecedented by modern European standards, and to ignore Riga’s international obligations,” according to Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, commenting on the adoption of the law “On Citizenship” by the Latvian Sejm. “This latest ethno-political experiment by Riga, which turns national minorities into permanent outcasts of a country in which they were born and lived all their lives, clearly demonstrates the democratic deficit in Latvia. We hope that the Europe Union, which took upon itself the responsibility to safeguard human rights and ethnic minority rights in Latvia upon the latter’s accession, can give its objective assessment on this.”

Reader comments

From Facebook:

Nicolas Borissov: Some countries exist only to engage in petty spitefulness. And not only towards Russia. There are these small slavering dogs, which bark all the time and strive to sneakily bite you the heels – they bear a strong resemblance to some countries.

Karina Kurchan [replying to above]: And of course it’s better not to do things the petty way, but to slam them with an Iskander straight away.

Tatyana Shunto: How long can one bear a grudge? Against whom? The government isn’t the people. How did Russia hurt them?

Karina Kurchan [replying to above]: Tatyana, it’s not about grudges. Tomorrow, Russia will say that it wishes to defend its citizens, and will start to “force them to peace,” carry out ethnic cleansing, insert military bases. It will say that it is on the request of Russian citizens. This has all happened before…

Yani Petkov: Wages are now higher in Russia anyway, so who cares.

The Russophobes Were Right… (About The Wrong Country)

This about Demographics, tagged , , , , was written by for on September 17, 2011

After peaking in 2007 at the height of its oil boom, the Russian economy slid off the rails, with GDP collapsing by 25% from peak to trough. Attempts to stem the decline by arresting pessimistic economists failed. Its image as a tiger economy, heavily promoted by Kremlin ideologues, was revealed to be a sham. Though anemic, growth returned this year; but little of it trickles down to ordinary Russians. Unemployment is over 16%, birth rates have collapsed, and millions of citizens are voting with their feet and migrating to work as laborers in affluent Western Europe.

This demographic free fall threatens to dash any remaining hopes of Russia ever converging to European living standards. Birth rates have fallen by 25% since the post-Soviet era peak in 2008, and the total fertility rate – the average number of children a woman can be expected to have over her lifetime – is now one of the lowest in the world, surpassed only by a few small, rich Asian states like Taiwan and Singapore. And with young professionals rushing for the exits, this situation is unlikely to be reversed any time soon. Last year, half a million people out of Russia’s 143 million population left for greener pastures; this figure has already been exceeded in the first half of this year. Already falling at an alarming 840,000 in 2009, population decrease further rose to 1,220,000 in 2010 and on current trends will approach 2 million this year. This demographic death spiral is the epitome of Putinism’s failure. The Leon Arons and Nicholas Eberstadts of this world were correct all along. Having been a Russophile shill all these years, it is time for me, like Johann Hari, to admit to my failures, apologize to the readers I misled, and go back to journalism school.

Oh wait, I almost forgot. I was actually talking about Latvia.

[Read more…]

Russia’s Demographic Resilience V

This about Demographics, tagged , , , , was written by for on February 3, 2011

In summary, the excess deaths from the once-in-10,000-years heatwave canceled out most of the increase in births, causing the rate of natural decrease to fall by only 7,400 relative to 2009. Adding in the 82,500 drop in net immigration for Jan-Nov 2009, and we can estimate that Russia’s population will fall by about 50,000 this year (cf. an increase of 23,300 in 2009).

Continuing my tradition of tracking demography across Eurasia generally, let’s take in the wider picture. A fall in births – probably caused by the POR’s austerity policies – caused Ukraine’s natural population decrease to rise from 172,570 in 2009 to 181,505. An increase in net migration from 11,792 to 14,469 means a population loss of about 167,000 in 2010.

[Read more…]