Latvia employer obligations and sanctions: notification, bans and inspections

Section 15 of Latvia's Immigration Law puts three duties on the employer who invites a third country national: make sure the purpose of the stay matches the documents filed for the visa or permit, notify PMLP or the State Border Guard in writing within three working days when it stops matching, and cover the worker's health care, stay and return where needed. Breaches are graded, and the heaviest grade closes the corridor for three years.

What the notification duty covers and how the clock runs

Section 15, paragraph one is written in working days and it starts on the day the mismatch arises, not on the day payroll noticed it. The employment a foreign worker actually performs must correspond to the documents on which the permit was issued: the named employer, the named occupation, the named place of work. Three working days is the deadline for telling the authority it no longer does.

A second deadline sits next to it and employers read the two as one. Section 43, paragraph two gives the inviter, or the worker where there is no inviter, five working days to tell PMLP that the circumstances behind the temporary residence permit have ceased or changed. Under the 2002 law both deadlines were three working days. Since 15 September 2026 they are three and five, and a diary entry written against the old text is now wrong in one direction and right in the other.

Three events trigger the deadline, and each of them is easy to process late. The first is a resignation processed at month end, where the paperwork is tidied up two weeks after the worker has already stopped coming in. The second is an internal transfer, a welder moved onto warehouse duties, with nobody checking that the invitation and the permit name a different occupation. The third is a move to a site in another city. In each case the permit no longer describes the real job, and the working days are already running.

Notification is the step that separates an employer in order from an employer whom the State Labour Inspectorate (VDI) will find during an inspection with a foreign national working outside the terms of a permit. Once the permit has lapsed or the work no longer matches it, the employment counts as illegal even where the employer had no intention of breaking the rule.

The invitation ban is graded, not a single range

Section 15, paragraph three lets PMLP bar a person or a company from inviting foreigners where the conduct occurred within the previous year, and it sets a different ceiling for each kind of breach.

The ladder is worth reading as a pricing table. A missed notification and an unpaid wage are not the same offence, and the difference between them is two years of access to the corridor. In practice the ban does more damage to a staffing plan than any fine: the company cannot start a new third country hire for as long as it runs, and extensions for workers already on site depend on the authority looking at each case separately. For a manufacturing employer whose plan rests on foreign labour, a one year ban costs at least two full recruitment seasons. A three year ban usually means the model has to be rebuilt around local or EU supply.

Two provisions soften the edge. Section 15, paragraph eight ends the inviter's obligations when the foreigner leaves by the date named in the invitation, or when the inviter withdraws the invitation in writing before the worker has used it. And under Section 26, paragraph six the head of PMLP may approve an invitation anyway, or shorten a ban already imposed, where the entry and stay are in the interests of the state.

The second authority in the chain is VDI. The inspectorate looks at the employment law side: whether there is a written contract, whether the worker is registered with the State Revenue Service, whether the wage actually paid matches the contract, and whether working time is recorded. A VDI finding of illegal employment is the material on which PMLP later builds the three year ban. The administrative fines in euro sit in the Immigration Law itself and were recast with the new law, so the current figure should be read off likumi.lv before it is quoted to a client.

Cost of stay and cost of departure

The employer who approves the invitation takes on responsibility for the foreign national's stay in Latvia and covers the cost of the return to the country of origin, including removal costs if it reaches that point. The liability does not end with the employment contract. If a dismissed worker remains in the country without a legal basis, the authority can pursue those costs against the employer who signed the invitation, and non payment is itself a one year ban ground under Section 15, paragraph three, point 2.

That is why offboarding a foreign worker carries one more step than offboarding a local one. Alongside the notification, the employer should record the date the worker left the country, or record that the worker has started a procedure with a new employer. Companies that skip the step find out about it a year later, when the next invitation is refused, and at that point a tax debt above 150 euro is enough to refuse it on its own under Section 26, paragraph one, point 15.

How the article numbers moved on 15 September 2026, and which provisions changed with them, is set out in Latvia's new Immigration Law text. The permit chain itself, from vacancy to residence card, is in the Latvia employment residence permit steps, and how long the equivalent chain runs in neighbouring corridors in work permit timelines by country.

The Latvian system is predictable for an employer who follows it: the permit terms, the three working day notification, the five working day notice of changed circumstances, the cost of departure. It becomes unpleasant only when one of those steps is postponed to the end of the month.