According to the Immigration Law, all persons who have been granted refugee or alternative status, as well as asylum seekers, have the right to employment without restrictions in Latvia if, for reasons beyond their control, no decision on granting or refusing to grant refugee or alternative status has been taken within six months.
The staff of the State Employment Agency (SEA) measure "Integration of Refugees and Persons with Alternative Status into the Latvian Labour Market" helps refugees and persons with alternative status to integrate into the Latvian labour market by providing advice on SEA services, labour market situation, job vacancies, education opportunities, etc.
To receive support from the SEA, a person must register with the SEA as unemployed or looking for work and fulfil the obligations set out in the individual job search plan. You should remember that actively looking for work is one of your responsibilities as an unemployed person, so you must also look for work yourself.
In the branch of the SEA with the help of an interpreter a profiling of a refugee or a person who has acquired an alternative status is carried out in order to find out his/her possibilities to integrate into the Latvian labour market, as well as SEA employment measures that would be necessary and suitable for him/her. Skills assessment for refugees and persons with an alternative status is carried out according to the same standards as for any other client of the SEA.
To work and live in Latvia, knowledge of the Latvian language is necessary, which is why the SEA offers refugees and persons with an alternative status to learn the national language without intermediary language in six levels of knowledge, each of which lasts 120 academic hours.
According to the result of the profiling, after the Latvian language training, the refugee or person with an alternative status is offered the possibility to use other services of the SEA that are suitable for him/her: competitiveness improvement measures (seminars, individual consultations), vocational training, subsidised jobs, practical training with an employer or temporary paid public works.
All SEA services are free of charge!
If an unemployed person with refugee or an alternative status does not fulfil the obligations specified in the individual job search plan without a justifiable reason - for example, does not attend a scheduled visit to the SEA, an employer traning or Latvian language training, and cannot be contacted by telephone, electronically or by post, then, like all unemployed persons, refugees or persons with alternative status lose their unemployed status.