Latvian citizenship for descendants of exiles: who qualifies, dual citizenship and how to register

If your ancestor was a Latvian citizen on 17 June 1940 and fled the Soviet or German occupation, or was deported, between then and 4 May 1990, you can register as a Latvian citizen and keep any other citizenship you hold. There is no generation limit in the law and no language test. You need to have been born before 1 October 2014; younger children become Latvian through a parent who registers first.

This page covers the exile route in detail, the other two ways descendants can become Latvian, and the dual citizenship rules that apply to each. For the wider picture, see the Latvian citizenship by descent guide.

Who counts as a Latvian exile?

Section 8.1 of the Citizenship Law (Pilsonības likums) and the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (OCMA, known in Latvian as PMLP) use the same three-part test. A Latvian exile is a person who:

1. was a Latvian citizen on 17 June 1940, the day the Soviet occupation began (or is a descendant of one);
2. left Latvia between 17 June 1940 and 4 May 1990 escaping the USSR or German occupation regime, or was deported; and
3. for those reasons did not return to Latvia as a permanent resident before 4 May 1990.

That covers the wartime refugees who reached Germany in 1944 and went on to the US, Canada, Australia or the UK from the displaced-persons camps, and people deported to the Soviet interior who never came back to live. It doesn’t matter which country your family ended up in or what citizenship they took later.

The law doesn’t define “escaping the occupation regime” any further. If your ancestor left in a less obvious way, for example by emigrating from Soviet Latvia in the 1970s or 1980s, ask OCMA how they treat that case before you build your file around the exile route.

Is there a generation limit?

No. The law defines descendants as “descending kin in a direct line”, so a child, grandchild, great-grandchild or later descendant of an exile can register. What limits you in practice is paperwork: you have to show each link from the exile down to you.

The one cut-off is a birth date. Section 8.1(2) keeps the right to register for an exile’s descendant born before 1 October 2014. A child born on or after that date doesn’t register as an exile’s descendant. Instead, once a parent is a Latvian citizen, the child is registered as the child of a Latvian citizen. So if you have young children, registering yourself is the step that opens the door for them. OCMA has a separate application form for a child under 15, so children born before that date can register at the same time as you.

Latvian dual citizenship: which rule applies to you

The 2013 amendments, in force from 1 October 2013, are what made Latvian citizenship attractive to the diaspora. How freely you can keep another passport depends on the route you register under:

• Exiles and their descendants: dual citizenship with any country (section 8.1(3)).
• Latvians and Livs registering under the ethnic route: dual citizenship with any country (section 9(3)).
• Other descendants of 17 June 1940 citizens (for example, the ancestor stayed in Latvia, or emigrated before 1940 but was still a citizen): only if your other citizenship is from another EU, EFTA or NATO country, Australia, Brazil or New Zealand, a country with a dual-citizenship agreement with Latvia (OCMA says there are none at present), or with Cabinet permission. Otherwise you must renounce it as part of the application.

For most readers of this site this makes little practical difference: the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom are NATO members, and Australia is named in the law, so their citizens can keep their passports on any route. The exile route matters most for people whose other citizenship is from outside that list.

There is a second thing to know about children. A Latvian citizen who becomes a dual citizen as a minor with a country outside the permitted list has to choose between the two citizenships between age 18 and 25 (section 23(3)). That obligation doesn’t apply to someone registered as an exile’s descendant, or whose other citizenship is from a permitted country.

After you register, the general rules apply to any new citizenship you take later: you keep Latvian citizenship only if the new one is from a permitted country, was acquired automatically through marriage or adoption, or the Cabinet approves. More on how this compares with other countries is in our dual citizenship by descent guide.

Documents for the exile route

OCMA and the Latvian Embassy in the US list the following:

1. The application, filled in in Latvian, giving your name in its Latvian form, date of birth, address and contact details. There is a separate form for a child under 15, signed by the child’s legal representative. Anyone 15 or over signs their own. If you aren’t sure how your name is rendered in Latvian, the Latvian Language Agency (valoda.lv) answers that.
2. The written confirmation (apliecinājums) that you or your ancestor left Latvia between 17 June 1940 and 4 May 1990 fleeing the occupation or was deported, and did not return to live before 4 May 1990. OCMA provides the form.
3. Your passport or ID card. If you post your file, send only a copy of this.
4. Your birth certificate, plus marriage or divorce certificates and any name-change document, and the birth certificates of your children under 18.
5. Proof that the ancestor was a Latvian citizen on 17 June 1940, using one of: a pre-war Latvian passport; a Latvian birth or marriage record from the Civil Registry Department in Riga; or an archive statement on the 1935 census, tax records or military service records from the State Historical Archives.
6. Documents linking each generation between that ancestor and you, usually birth and marriage certificates. Our guide to building a document chain walks through this.

Apostilles and translations. Foreign birth, marriage and name-change documents must be legalised (for the US, Canada and Australia that means an apostille) and translated into Latvian. EU, EEA, UK and Swiss public documents don’t need legalising. You don’t need to translate your passport. The US embassy says the translation can be done by anyone fluent in Latvian, as long as the translator adds a signed statement that it is correct with their name, personal identity number, place and date. A certified translator is an option, not a requirement on that page.

Originals or copies. You can post legalised originals, or notarised copies that have themselves been legalised. The original has to be legalised before the notarised copy is made. Posted originals come back with the decision; OCMA lists €12.15 plus postage to post them back.

Finding proof of your ancestor’s 1940 citizenship

This is the hard part for most families. Start with what’s in the house: refugee families often kept the pre-war passport. Displaced-persons and immigration papers can also show where someone came from and when they left, which helps with the exile confirmation, though OCMA’s list of proof of 1940 citizenship is the passport, Latvian civil records or an archive statement.

• National Archives of Latvia enquiry service. Its listed enquiry topics include “the citizenship of the Republic of Latvia in 1918–1940”. You can order an archive statement online (in Latvian), by post, or by email signed with a secure electronic signature. The archive says a statement takes about one month, and you pay a state fee based on the number of facts in the statement after it is prepared. Requests have to be specific, so send full names, dates and the place your ancestor lived.
• Civil Registry Department, Riga. Latvian birth, marriage and death certificates from the last 100 years can be requested from any Latvian civil registry office, or through a Latvian embassy.
• Raduraksti. The archives’ free online portal of digitised church books and other records. It’s useful for building the family line yourself.

Note that since 1 November 2020 the State Historical Archive has suspended new applications for genealogical research for an indefinite period. That is separate from an archive statement on specific facts such as citizenship, which the enquiry service still lists. Parish records are often the backbone of the older generations; see church records for citizenship by descent.

Where to apply, cost and processing time

Send the file by post to OCMA’s Persons Status Control Division, Čiekurkalna 1. līnija 1, k-3, Riga, LV-1026, Latvia. Whether you can hand documents in at a Latvian embassy or consulate instead depends on the mission; OCMA says to ask your nearest one. Questions go to pskn@pmlp.gov.lv.

Cost. OCMA’s registration pages for exiles, other 1940 descendants and Latvians and Livs list no state fee for the registration itself, and OCMA’s state-fee index lists fees for naturalisation and for restoring citizenship, but not for registration. Your real costs are apostilles, translations, archive statements and postage.

Time. The Citizenship Law sets four months to examine an exile’s application, and OCMA counts that from the day it has all the documents. The US embassy adds that an incomplete file can take longer. Once registered, you are entered in the Population Register and given a Latvian personal identity number, which is what you need before applying for a Latvian passport.

If your ancestor wasn’t an exile: the other two routes

Descendants of 17 June 1940 citizens

OCMA says that people who can’t register as exiles’ descendants, but can show that an ancestor was a Latvian citizen on 17 June 1940, can still acquire Latvian citizenship under the courts’ reading of the law. The reasoning is Latvia’s doctrine of state continuity: citizenship carried on through the occupation, so one of your parents is presumed to have been a citizen when you were born. The documents are much the same as for exiles, without the exile confirmation, plus a signed statement about your other citizenship. OCMA gives one month for a decision. Dual citizenship is limited to the permitted countries above.

Latvians and Livs

If your ancestor wasn’t a citizen in 1940 at all, there’s a route based on ethnicity. You must show that an ancestor lived permanently in Latvia (within its 17 June 1940 borders) at some point from 1881 to 17 June 1940, that you belong to the Latvian nation or to the Livs (through your own, a parent’s or a grandparent’s records, or confirmation from a Latvian community organisation abroad), and that you are fluent in Latvian. The language test is taken in Latvia, and OCMA sets the date after it has reviewed your documents. People who did more than half of their primary education in Latvian are exempt. The decision can take up to a year, and you can keep any other citizenship. Your children under 15 can be registered with you.

The 2013 amendments and the 1 October dates

Two dates from the 2013 amendments cause most of the confusion in older articles:

• 1 October 2013. The amended law took effect. Section 2(1)(1) now treats as citizens the 1940 citizens and descendants who had registered by that date, or who had the right to register under the earlier wording. If a relative registered in the 1990s or 2000s, they are already a citizen, and their children can go through OCMA’s process for a child of a Latvian citizen, which the US embassy says is decided within one month.
• 1 October 2014. The birth-date cut-off for registering directly as an exile’s descendant. It is not a deadline to apply: the law sets no closing date for those born before it.

Neighbouring countries handle the same history differently. Compare Estonia, which also anchors on 1940, and Lithuanian dual citizenship.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

• Citizenship Law (Pilsonības likums), English translation, likumi.lv (sections 1, 2, 8.1, 9 and 23; transitional provisions)
• OCMA (PMLP): Latvian exiles and their descendants (definition, documents, where to submit, four-month decision)
• OCMA (PMLP): Descendant of a 17 June 1940 citizen who is a citizen of another country
• OCMA (PMLP): Latvians and Livs (ancestry, language test, one-year decision)
• OCMA (PMLP): Dual citizenship
• Embassy of Latvia in the United States: Requesting Latvian citizenship (apostilles, translations, document list)
• National Archives of Latvia: Enquiry services and Genealogical research

Checked against these sources on 24 October 2026. Latvian government sites were unreachable directly that day, so we read their most recent archived copies (2025–2026). Rules and procedures change; confirm with OCMA before you apply.