Under a new proposal from Lithuania's presidential palace, migrant workers who have lived and worked in the country for two years would be legally required to leave for six months – a rule that not only risks forcing them away but could also block them from family reunification and from ever gaining permanent residency.
The following is an opinion piece by Dr. Skirmantas Bikelis, Senior research fellow at Law Institute of Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences.
How well people of different backgrounds live together is a complicated question – as complicated as society itself. Trying to sum up migrant integration and social wellbeing with a single number or percentage is not just imprecise, it can be actively misleading. Yet that is exactly what is happening in Lithuania's current immigration debate, and foreigners living here should understand what is being proposed and why.
Earlier this spring, Vilnius mayor Valdas Benkunskas made himself something of a laughing stock among experts by announcing a supposedly scientifically-proven figure. According to him, once migrants reach 10% of a city's population, this marks a "tipping point" leading to the formation of migrant ghettos – and he used this claim to argue for stricter, migrant-unfriendly measures in the capital of Lithuania, where migrants already make up that proportion of the population.
Sociologist Karolis Žibas, founder of the NGO Diversity Development Group, dismissed this, saying that Benkunskas' "10% tipping point" argument was plucked out of thin air, with no research to back it up.
In reality, according to Žibas, ghettos or segregated neighbourhoods form because of factors like lack of affordable housing, housing discrimination, income inequality, or gaps in education, not because of any specific percentage of foreigners. Still, these are problems worth fixing regardless of how many migrants live in a country.
A new figure, this time from the presidential palace
Now a new, even smaller number has emerged – this time from the office of President Gitanas Nausėda – being used to justify tightening immigration rules further.
Foreigners currently make up 7.5% of Lithuania's population, and the president's chief adviser, Vaidas Augustinavičius, argues this figure already needs to be "managed" and "restricted."
At the president's initiative, the National Security Group within the presidential palace has drafted amendments to the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens. If passed, these changes could make it significantly harder for many labour migrants to build a stable life in Lithuania – and could even push existing migrant workers to leave, with little incentive to come back.
What's being proposed?
First, the president is proposing to change how labour migrant quotas are calculated so that they include not only newly arriving migrants but also those continuing to work in Lithuania. This would sharply reduce – essentially by half – the quota available for new arrivals, unless the overall quota were doubled. It is not clear if that's happening any time soon.
Secondly, perhaps the single most consequential change in the package: labour migrants would be required to leave Lithuania for at least six months after every two years of work.
A presidential adviser, Evelina Gudzinskaitė, has defended this by suggesting it simply gives workers a natural chance to visit family back home, in line with how their work cycles operate anyway. But this framing misses the real impact. Migrant workers can already visit their families whenever they choose - they don't need a forced six-month 'deportation' to do so.
Worse still, under current Lithuanian law, migrant workers only gain the right to bring their families to live with them after two continuous years of legal residence. So, a mandatory six-month departure every two years would permanently block that right, meaning workers could never reach the residency threshold needed to bring their spouses or children to Lithuania.
It would also prevent them from ever qualifying for permanent residency, which requires five continuous years in the country, and eventually citizenship.
Why family reunification matters - and why blocking it backfires
EU law on family reunification recognises that living together as a family supports social stability and helps migrants integrate into their host country, which in turn benefits the wider economy and society. When families live together, money spent on housing and living costs stays in Lithuania rather than being sent abroad.
Research in criminology also suggests people with family responsibilities are generally more likely to follow the law (as per Robert J Sampson and John H Laub's theory of informal social control).
Blocking migrants from settling permanently or reuniting with their families would strip away their motivation to learn Lithuanian, put down roots, or build a long-term future here.
As Ivanas Trunovas, a migration researcher at Diversity Development Group, puts it: "There is a worrying trend in Lithuania – rules are being tightened for both those already living here and new arrivals. This reduces their motivation to integrate and build a long-term life in the country. If we don't see newly arrived people as part of our shared future, and don't guarantee them opportunities, protection and access to services, the result will be that Lithuanian residents of foreign origin become less willing to integrate."
The justification
The explanatory note behind the proposal argues Lithuania has reached its limit on accepting migrants, that the country has not invested enough in integration services, and that a more "flexible" labour market requires higher turnover of foreign workers.
This reasoning does not hold up well. Once again, attempting to justify strict anti-immigration measures with a particular figure (7.5%) makes for a rather flimsy argument. After all, the principle of "no person, no problem" belongs to undemocratic regimes, not a welfare state.
And if integration services are indeed lacking, the answer is to fund and build them – not to close the door on migrants Lithuania actually needs.
Notably, these restrictions are aimed squarely at labour migrants who create very few problems: people invited by Lithuanian employers, who have income, housing, and background checks from the police and security services already in place.
What they typically need isn't extensive economic support, but basic cultural integration help – such as accessible language courses. That should not be difficult to provide. Yet it is precisely these workers - the ones actively sought out and needed by Lithuanian businesses - who are being targeted.
Aurelija Maldutytė, president of the Lithuanian Confederation of Employers, has pointed out that Lithuania has faced a decade-long shortage of long-haul lorry drivers, welders and other specialists that local workers simply won't take on. Annual quotas for hiring foreign staff already run out before the year ends. Despite this, the presidential palace wants to make it harder to bring in exactly the labour migrants the country badly needs.
What's really driving this?
So, the presidential palace's proposal appears to be bad for Lithuania's economy, and works against the welfare of migrant families and their prospects for successful integration.
What, then, is really driving such proposals? The need for labour market flexibility, cited by the presidential adviser, hardly sounds like a sufficiently weighty reason.
A more revealing comment came from employers' representative Maldutytė in a radio discussion, when she said many Lithuanians feel uneasy about foreign workers - not because of anything they've done, but because of unfamiliar language, culture, or religion.
That discomfort appears to be borne out in survey data: research from the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences and Diversity Development Group found that only around half of Lithuanians would support the country accepting labour migrants from outside the EU, and a similar share said they would not want Muslims living in their neighbourhood.
Yet there is no evidence that migrant workers or Muslims living in Lithuania are causing any significant problems.
The unease seems rooted less in facts than in unfamiliarity and fears stoked by some commentators and politicians - including false claims that migration is "out of control" or drives up crime.
If policy continues to be shaped by these sentiments rather than actual scientific evidence, the risk is a set of rules that damage both Lithuania's economy and the wellbeing of the society it is meant to protect – including the migrant families already contributing to it.
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