• Social Services Agency implements a project providing support to third-country nationals and their families
• Procession “Steps of Alive” commemorating victims of Holocaust held in Riga

 The Social Services Agency implements a project providing support to third-country nationals and their families. According to representatives of the Agency, foreigners who arrive to Latvia often face psychological discomfort and need to get accustomed to climatic, social and mutual relations environment. As language is one of the most important factors for inclusion in the society, for Russian speaking immigrants it is much easier to integrate and communicate with local residents. While, for people from further countries who might look different or have different skin colour the problems are more pronounced as they face various stereotypes. Neatkariga

Vesti Segodnya reports about a traditional procession “Steps of Alive” commemorating victims of Holocaust in Latvia. The procession was conducted on the streets where the Nazis organised Riga Ghetto. Members of Jewish community, Latvian high officials and representatives of foreign embassies took part in the procession. In total, during the years of Nazi occupation, more than 80,000 Jews got killed in Latvia, including Jews from Germany, Austria, Poland, and Hungary.

• Aleksandrs Gaponenko explains principles of the calculation of damage caused to people who were granted status of non-citizens in Latvia

Vesti Segodnya prints an interview with a representative of the Parliament of Unrepresented Aleksandrs Gaponenko - initiator of the calculation of damage caused to people who were granted status of non-citizens in Latvia. According to Mr Gaponenko, the damage will be counted taking into consideration all areas in which non-citizens got deprived of rights. For instance, financial damage from deprivation of privatisation certificates in 90’s (non-citizens received less certificates than citizens); spent amount of taxis paid by both citizens and non-citizens on parliamentary and local deputies taking into consideration that non-citizens do not have voting rights; unequal counting of pensions to non-citizens; prohibition to occupy certain posts in the public sector by non-citizens; also too high state language requirements for some professions. Mr Gaponenko believes that the existing Latvian political regime reminds of national-socialistic regime which splits the residents on “Aryans” and “non-Aryans”.

• Neatkariga prints an articles about Chinese immigrants living on Latvia
• Latvijas Avize prints an article about activities aimed at society integration

 Neatkariga prints an articles about Chinese immigrants living on Latvia. 85 temporary residence permits got issued to Chinese citizens this year in Latvia. In total, since 2010, 221 Chinese citizens received the residence permit in exchange for investments in the local economy or purchase of expensive real estate. According to the data of the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs, the total amount of investments in Latvian economy made by Chinese who received residence permit is LVL 3,025 372 (EUR 4,274 935). According to Neatkariga, Chinese send their children to local Latvian language schools and want them to learn Latvian. The Chinese most likely are attracted to Latvia by the fact that it is the EU member, it has nice nature, pure air, no restrictions for the birth of children, and no administrative restriction for travelling inside the country.

Latvijas Avize prints an article about activities aimed at society integration. Funding in amount of more than 1 million lats (EUR 1,4 millions) was granted for different integration activities in 2013. According to the article, greater support should be granted for promotion of youth guard, scouts and guides involving also ethnic minority children as those effectively help young people to built national identity.

• Former Latvian non-citizen who became Swedish citizen now can vote in the local elections in Latvia
• Nationalists’ union repeatedly prepared that draft law on transition of all kindergartens into Latvian language only

 Vesti Segodnya interviews a young man, former Latvian non-citizen who moved to Sweden and received Swedish citizenship. The young man now is registered in Latvia as permanent resident of the EU country and have right to vote in the municipal elections. According to him, it is an absurd that foreign citizens can vote while Latvian non-citizens who live here and pay taxes still do not have voting rights.

 According to Vesti Segodnya, the nationalists’ union All for Latvia!-FF/LNIM repeatedly prepared that draft law on transition of education in all municipal kindergartens into Latvian language only. This time, the nationalists proposed to start the reform with 1 September 2015. As reported, the Saeima recently refused the identical proposal of the nationalists with the only difference that the reform was planned to begin on 1 September 2014.

• Latvijas Avize prints an interview with Jewish Rabbi Yosef Mendelevich

Latvijas Avize prints an interview with Jewish Rabbi Yosef Mendelevich who was born in Latvia and during the Soviet times was imprisoned in forced labour camp for resistance to russification of Jews and later expelled from the Soviet Union. Commenting the current language situation in Latvia, Mr Mendelevich believes that the state language proficiency by young non-Latvians improved sufficiently comparing to the Soviet years when the young generation who arrived to Latvia mostly as a labour force spoke no Latvian at all. Mr Mendelevich believes that in order to learn the language for non-Latvians it is very important to read Latvian literature, newspapers, to listen programmes in Latvian language. Yosef Mendelevich considers that the people who arrived to Latvia during USSR should understand that they should respect the nation (ethnic Latvians) to whose state they have arrived, to accept their laws and not to enforce their culture.