It's essential to relocate some Latvians (5)
I believe the answer is:
vital
'it's essential' is the definition.
(similar in meaning)
'relocate some latvians' is the wordplay.
'relocate' becomes 'vita' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'some' indicates taking the first letters.
The first letter of 'latvians' is 'l'.
'vita'+'l'='VITAL'
'to' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for vital that I've seen before include "Highly important" , "Critical; life-sustaining" , "Essential for life; key" , "Critical, necessary" , "Extremely important, essential to success" .)