VSAT: secondary illegal migration from Latvia to Lithuania decreased this year

At that time, at the beginning of April, a group of 14 migrants were detained in Kalvarija municipality – two Latvian citizens, suspected of illegally transporting citizens of India and Nepal to Western Europe for a reward. According to preliminary data, the foreigners entered Latvia illegally by crossing the border from Belarus.

The representative of the State Border Guard Service, Giedrius Mišutis, says that the flow of secondary migration has slowed this year, last year over 1,000 people were detained in Lithuania during illegal secondary migration from Latvia. migrants.

“If the flow of people trying to enter Latvia illegally was high, it is likely that this process would encourage attempts to plan secondary migration,” G. Mišutis told Elta.

According to him, in the case of the so-called Latvian route in question, illegal secondary migration includes cases where citizens of third countries illegally cross the external border of the EU and continue to transit through Lithuania towards the destination countries.

Illegal secondary migration is defined as the travel of third-country nationals or stateless persons from one EU or Schengen associated country to another without the prior consent of national authorities (both by independent travel and by using the services of irregular migrant carriers).

Illegal secondary migration creates additional opportunities for criminal groups to exploit migrants and obtain additional income, so it remains a widespread, sufficiently dynamic and adaptive phenomenon at the EU level.

“In the absolute majority of cases, illegal migrants choose Lithuania as a transit country to go to destination countries located in Western Europe, so illegal secondary migration is observed quite often in our country. Illegal secondary migration in Lithuania is often associated with the phenomenon of abuse of the asylum procedure, i.e. cases where foreigners apply for asylum, but without receiving a decision on the granting of asylum or after receiving an unfavorable decision, they leave the Aliens Registration Centers or other places of accommodation and go to the destination countries, even though they have the right to leave from the state where the asylum application was submitted, and they do not have to move freely in the Schengen area,” G. Mišutis said to Eltai.

According to him, when assessing illegal secondary movement, more criteria and conditions can be established under which the actions of a certain foreigner can be considered secondary illegal movement (for example, the departure of a person who has exceeded the permitted time of stay in the country or a person who does not have a valid travel document from one EU countries to another EU country or other etc.).

Last year, VSAT recorded a significant increase in illegal secondary migration from Latvia. In total in 2023 1,193 illegal migrants were detained, who were transported or traveled by themselves from Latvia, which they entered illegally from Belarus.

in 2022 only 84 illegal migrants were detained.

Last year, two-thirds of such foreigners were detained by Lithuanian officials at the EU’s internal borders with Latvia and Poland, where there is no permanent control, or inside the country. A third of the migrants were still detained by Polish officials.

After completing the necessary procedures, Lithuanian border guards usually return such immigrants to their colleagues from Latvia.

According to VSAT, a fifth, ie 256 persons, of migrants who tried to enter Western Europe from Latvia via Lithuania last year had illegally left the foreigner’s accommodation centers in this country. The remaining 80 percent, i.e. 937 persons, who illegally crossed the Latvian border from Belarus tried to go through Lithuania towards their target countries.

Such persons have mostly applied for asylum after illegally crossing the border from Belarus. While their asylum applications are being processed, such foreigners have no right to leave the country.