Tonight we – me, Jānis and Sniedze – spent about three to four hours trying to provide the resolution “The work of Latvia’s people abroad stimulates/does not stimulate the economy of Latvia”. A recent theme, of course. Much debated in the mass media as well. Still, as we tried to figure out the arguments, we found out, that, thinking in the long term, looking really deeply in the consequences, the emigration must give a great deal of economical benefits for Latvia. Economical.

The average wages are expected to rise; an improvement in the technologies must be made to keep up with the new circumstances of the market. Thus, the whole economy is expected to become more advanced, more competitive. And that means more money for us all. And all those people are bringing about twenty million lats a month back to Latvia.

And, when we started to figure out some arguments for the negative case of the resolution, we discovered the real difficulties, since at the beginning there were almost no arguments against this, arguments that would provide evidence for “does not stimulate” part, because – think about this – the only way of not stimulating the economy of Latvia is by working abroad with NO link to Latvia. How many could such people be? I think, not too many. And, if we look really deeply, a stimulus can also be negative. In this way of thinking we can come to the conclusion that all people that have any link with Latvia, must stimulate its economy in some way. I wonder what the author of the resolution though about when deciding about it. To my mind, there is no use of crying about torrents of people rushing out of this nice country. No need to get emotional, this can be the impulse to finally change our business environment and the average wages. And regarding some of those people who leave – we do not really need them here if they can do only mushroom cutting or any unqualified work. I am sad about the smart minds that leave this country, but I hope they will come back after years, when the emigration will have made politicians and entrepreneurs to act in order to improve the economy of Latvia.