CANADA LIFTS VISA REQUIREMENT ON CZECH REPUBLIC AND LATVIA

Under pressure from the EU, Canada has removed the visitor visa requirement (Temporary Resident Visa) for citizens of the Czech Republic and Latvia. The two visa requirements date back to very different sets of circumstances: The visa requirement on citizens of Latvia is a leftover from the breakup of the Soviet Union; Latvia (together with Estonia and Lithuania) was a former Soviet satellite, where citizens used their new found freedom to go abroad and never come back, but the situation changed dramatically when Latvia joined the EU and began experiencing strong economic growth, an incentive for its citizens to stay in Europe. The visa situation with the Czech Republic is more complex: in the 1990s, the Czech Republic enjoyed visa-free status, but a deluge of bogus Czech and Hungarian Roma "refugees", encouraged by unscrupulous lawyers and consultants, inundated Canada's asylum system. It is then surprising that the visa has been removed, and further monitoring to determine if the situation will repeat itself is warranted.