Latvian officials estimate up to 100,000 people have emigrated from this country of 2.3 million since it joined the EU along with nine other countries in May 2004.
Most EU states chose to maintain border restrictions for accession state workers, but Ireland, the UK and Sweden chose to open theirs. As many as 25,000 to 30,000 are estimated to have travelled to Ireland.
While unemployment rates in Latvia are around nine per cent - similar to rates in France and Germany - the main reason workers are leaving is because of low wages and the relatively high cost of living.
The average monthly minimum wage is just 90 lats (about €125), whereas in countries such as Ireland, workers can easily earn several times that amount.
"The problem is that we have European prices with Latvian wages," says Ruta Balode, the mayor of the small municipality of Virga, a rural area in the west of the country that has been affected by the departure of young workers.
However, it is in areas such as the Latgale farming region in eastern Latvia that the country has been hit the hardest. Here, in some cases, parents have chosen to leave their children with grandparents to work in low-skilled jobs such as mushroom picking in Ireland.
While migration is of short-term benefit, the high volume of emigration is leaving vacancies in areas such as construction, medicine and nursing in Latvia. Now businesses as well as the government are attempting the difficult task of persuading its citizens to return to the country.
In a speech at an Irish Government-organised conference in Riga last month, Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern sought to reassure Latvians that many of its citizens would ultimately return, pointing to Ireland's experience.
"Our returnees, who number more than 200,000, have brought with them skills, experience, economic and human capital which they have been able to put to good use in their native land," he said.
