Latvia's new Immigration Law from September 2026: what changes for employers

The Saeima adopted a new Immigration Law on 20 August 2026, the President promulgated it on 1 September, and it entered into force on 15 September 2026 (likumi.lv, document 370622). The Immigration Law of 31 October 2002 has lapsed. For an employer this is not a renumbering exercise: the residence permit for employment fell from five years to one.

The three figures that moved

The first is the duration of the employment permit. Section 27, paragraph one, point 12 issues a temporary residence permit for employment for up to one year, with an exception where the employer is a micro enterprise tax payer. The 2002 law allowed up to five. A workforce plan built on a five year renewal cycle now has a one year cycle, and the recheck of pay, insurance and address falls due five times as often.

The second is the intra corporate transfer. Points 15 and 16 of the same article give a manager or specialist transferred inside a group up to one year, and a trainee up to one year. Under the 2002 law the manager and specialist route ran to three years. A group that costed a three year secondment to Riga against the old text is now costing one year plus renewals.

The third figure did not move. The EU Blue Card stays at two years under point 13, and where it is requested for no more than two years it is issued for three months longer than the contract. That makes the Blue Card the longest employment based permit in the Latvian system, which is a reversal of the position an employer would have described a year ago.

One deadline moved as well, and only one. Section 15, paragraph one keeps the inviter's three working day duty to inform PMLP or the State Border Guard that the purpose of the stay no longer matches the documents. Section 43, paragraph two now gives five working days, rather than three, to report that the circumstances behind a temporary residence permit have ceased or changed.

Where each provision now sits

The ban in Section 15, paragraph three is now explicitly a ladder rather than a range. False information or a missed notification carries up to one year, an uncovered cost of stay up to one year with a repeat decision possible, inviting a foreigner who breached the entry and stay rules up to two years, and a breach of employment rules or an unpaid wage up to three years. The conduct has to have occurred within the previous year. Section 26, paragraph six lets the head of PMLP shorten a ban where the entry and stay are in the interests of the state.

Section 26 also prices the employer's own standing for the first time in figures an accountant can check. A tax debt above 150 euro refuses the invitation. A labour supply company that is an inactive taxpayer, or was founded within the previous six months, is refused, and the same test applies to any employer inviting a worker into an occupation in major group 9 of the Occupation Classifier.

What happens to files and permits already in the system

The transitional provisions answer this directly, and they split the two questions.

Provision 4 holds that documents lodged for a visa or a temporary residence permit before 15 September 2026 are examined, and the permits issued, under the 2002 law. A file that reached PMLP on 12 September is therefore still a five year file.

Provision 6 holds that temporary residence permits issued before that date remain valid until the end of their registration or validity period. A five year permit issued in June 2026 runs its five years.

Provision 7 is the one that bites later. A worker whose permit carries a registration term and who wants to stay to the end of his residence rights files for a repeat permit under the new law, and that request is examined under the new law. The five year permit survives; the renewal behind it does not.

Building the check into the process

The most useful fix is a single date in your own document. Every checklist that cites an article of the Immigration Law should carry a note saying which text it was written against, because a citation to article 9.1 or article 23 now points at a law that no longer exists. Without that date there is no way to tell whether the checklist has gone stale, and the person who reads it a year from now will assume it is correct.

The second fix moves both notification deadlines out of memory and into a calendar, as two separate entries rather than one. Three working days and five working days are different tasks now.

On cost, the change of law moves nothing. The state fee for examining a residence permit application is 160.00 euro within 30 days, 280.00 euro within 10 working days and 560.00 euro within 5 working days, and an employment invitation costs 17.00 euro on paper or 10.00 through latvija.lv plus 85.00 euro for the right to employment (PMLP price list, updated 18 March 2026). The larger cost in these files is rarely the fee. It is the start date that moved.

The step by step procedure, from vacancy to permit, is covered in the Latvia employment residence permit steps, and the separate track for highly qualified staff in the EU Blue Card in Latvia. Employers running short contracts should read seasonal employment rules in Latvia.

A new law is not a reason to pause hiring. It is a reason to read six provisions once and write the date next to them.