Comments by "TotalRookie_LV" (@TotalRookie_LV) on "Into Europe"
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But non-citizens are not "stateless" people! "Stateless" is completely different status. Even Germany has (or had) non-citizen passports, current president of Latvia Egils Levits had it while living in Germany after his parents left USSR, it means you are protected and belong to the country, yet you can't vote as a citizen and can't take certain positions dealing with state security, like being a policeman or being elected into parliament etc.
Besides knowledge of language is not a prohibitive measure, my wife learned Latvian pretty much in a single year, although in her case it was not needed to gain citizenship, as her father's ancestors have lived here at least since XVIII century.
Simply put, we don't have problems with Russians as such, we have problems with current Kremlin usurpers at power and those who believe USSR did only good and we should be grateful for them for the period of Soviet occupation.
"Removal of Russian from schools" isn't really true either, my kid is in Latvian school, and they do learn Russian, not as a local language tho, but as a foreign one just as English and German (doesn't really matter, as the kid speaks Russian already, given half of family is Russian).
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