courses only a few hours a week

But usually they want to stay here, assimilate – families, children, bring their wives,” says Bobule, director of the Riga International Learning Center.

It is “de facto” known that recently at the airport border guards detained several people who traveled from Vietnam to Latvia to study English in a three-month course. They have not been able to communicate in English at all. They were planned to be accepted by the language school “Pygmalion”. The company’s office says that beginner courses were planned for the Vietnamese.

Additional checks were carried out at the airport for Vietnamese who went to study at the “Hotel School” Hotel Business College. Here, the fee for one academic year for foreigners is four thousand – more expensive than some programs, for example, at the Technical University. College level studies do not require more than a conversational level (A2).

Júlija Pasnak, chairman of the board of the “Hotel School” College of Hotel Business, director: “If we are talking about the chef program, then the lessons take place practically, not by writing papers. Practically, they cope very well with all these as big obstacles, so I don’t see.”

According to the data of the Directorate of Citizenship and Migration Affairs, the Hotel Business College had one of the highest visa refusal rates – 35 of 104 applications were rejected, or a third (34%).

The data provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs show that in 2023 Latvia refused a total of 624 visas, or 15 percent of all applications with the purpose of entry for “education”.

Director of the Consular Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Agnese Saliņa: “If we are sometimes criticized that embassies refuse visas on purpose, then I can say that this is definitely not the case, because from the point of view of the process, it is much easier for us to issue a visa than to refuse it. Because every refusal must be justified and reasoned, there must be specific facts, specific references to the regulatory framework. Also, each of these refusals can be appealed. Therefore, from the point of view of such a process, it is really very time-consuming. And if one visa is to be issued – it would take about 30 minutes, then to issue a refusal and,