• President Andris Berzins returned the draft amendments to the Immigration Law concerning residence permits back to the Parliament
• Newspapers report about a congress of a social democratic party “Concord”

The President of Latvia Andris Berzins returned the draft amendments to the Immigration Law concerning residence permits back to the Parliament. As reported, the Saeima supported the draft amendments introducing quotas on granting residence permits to foreign investors and also a new option to receive residence permit by paying EUR 50,000 to the state budget. In a letter to the Saeima’s Speaker Solvita Aboltina, the President drew attention to the absurdity of such provisions and stressed that quotas would harm investment environment. The President also stressed that various researches approved financial benefit of the existing provisions on residence permits to foreign investors. Vesti Segodnya

Newspapers report about a congress of a social democratic party “Concord”. Its leader Nils Usakovs stressed that one of the main tasks of the party is to care about preservation and development of Latvian language and culture and, at the same time, it is important to care more effectively about ethnic minorities and to fight against Russophobia, xenophobia and nationalism. Party’s leaders also stressed the support the Concord Centre received from ethnic Latvians at the elections to the Riga City Council and ethnic Latvian members of the party. Diena, Latvijas Avize

• Neatkariga reports about desecration of the monument with swastikas

Neatkariga reports about desecration of the monument to the first Latvian president Janis Cakste. Unknown persons painted two swastikas and wrote “M.Ruks” on the monument. According to the newspaper, most likely “M.Ruks” means Maris Ruks who is known as one of the initiators of a public collection of signatures in support of demolition of the Monument to the Liberators of Riga from Nazi Invaders. Maris Ruks also is in the process of writing a book about the Holocaust in Latvia. Commenting the case with the desecration of the monument, Mr Ruks said that it is done by neo-Nazis.

• Congress of Non-citizens: granting Latvian citizenship to a well-known chess player Garri Kasparov would be a spit in the face of all Latvian non-citizens
• Expert on constitutional rights Aivars Endzins: draft Preamble to the Constitution contradicts the Constitution itself

Vesti Segodnya reports about reaction of the society and politicians to a request of a well known Russian chess player and oppositional politician Garri Kasparov for Latvian citizenship sent to the Saeima’s factions. Mr Kasparov asks Latvia to grant him citizenship for special merits before Latvia. Mr Kasparov believes that his special merits are the fact that he took part in chess tournaments in Latvia (in 1970’s) and that his ex-wife is Latvian citizen, while his son has a residence permit in Latvia. While some politicians consider that Latvia will gain from granting Mr Kasparov citizenship, other politicians do not support it. Thus, MP Janis Dombrava (nationalists’ union) considers that the most important interest of Latvia is its security and not the attempts to annoy the President of a neighbour country by any means. MP Augusts Brigmanis (Union of Greens and Farmers) believes that it would be better if Mr Kasparov tries to go through the naturalisation procedure as non-citizens do. The Congress of Non-citizens also criticizes the request of MR Kasparov: the Congress believes that if the government grants him Latvian citizenship it would be a spit in the face of all non-citizens who have real merits before the state because they lived here all their life and worked for this country.

Neatkariga prints an interview with an expert on constitutional rights, ex-chairperson of the Constitutional Court Aivars Endzins about the draft Preamble to the Constitution of Latvia. According to Mr Endzins, the idea of the Preamble was raised because of the referendum on the status of Russian language in Latvia in order to prevent such referendum in the future. However, Mr Endzins stresses that the draft Preamble elaborated by the head of the President’s Commission on Constitutional Rights Egils Levits cannot solve this problem as it contradicts the Constitution itself. The draft Preamble says that Latvian independence, territorial integrity, sovereignty of people, Latvian language as a state language, democratic political system – are untouchable values.  Mr Endzins stresses that these issues are already included in the Article 77 of the Constitution which says that in order to change these values it is necessary to arrange referendum. Therefore, Mr Endzins believes that if it is really necessary to strengthen these values than the Article 77 should be amended to determine which articles cannot be amended.

• Janis Urbanovics: ethnic Latvians do not feel themselves as majority, while Russian speakers as minorities
• 420 applications submitted for dual citizenship

According to the head of the Saeima’s faction of the Concord Centre Janis Urbanovics, there are two problems in Latvia: ethnic Latvians do not feel themselves as majority in Latvia and do not act like majority; while, minorities – mostly Russian speakers – do not feel and act like minorities. Mr Urbanovics believes that such situation hinders unity of the society. The second problem is a large number of non-citizens in Latvia. Mr Urbanovics believes that these people still feel the offense about the fact that they were made “scapegoats” after Latvia restored its independence. Such offense, according to Mr Urbanovics, raises feuds in the society.  Vesti Segodnya

During first months since the amendments on dual citizenship came into force, the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs received 420 applications for Latvian citizenship. The majority of applicants for dual citizenship – 300 - are parents whose children were born outside Latvia and automatically received citizenship of other country. Vesti Segodnya   

• Saeima supported controversial draft amendments aimed at restriction of granting residence permits to foreign investors

Yesterday, the Saeima supported in the final reading the draft amendments to the Immigration Law aimed at restriction of granting residence permits to foreign investors.  Thus, residence permits can be granted to those foreign citizens who invest at least EUR 150,000 in real estate in any region of Latvia. Moreover, the foreigner has to pay EUR 25,000 for the residence permit. The amendments also foresee quotas: not more than 700 residence permits can be granted to those foreign citizens who invested EUR 150,000 – 500,000 in Latvian real estate and 100 residence permits for those who invested over EUR 500,000 in Latvian real estate within one year. The new amendments also stipulate other option for third country nationals to receive residence permit in Latvia – to pay the state EUR 50,000. The government coalition partners argue that these amendments were developed following the agreement between all coalition partners because of the ultimatum pushed by the nationalists’ union who demanded the restrictions and threatened to vote against the state budget for 2014. The amendments are forwarded to the President of Latvia who may return them to Saeima for the repeated revision. Vesti Segodnya, Neatkariga, Latvijas Avize