This really resonates with me. I have lived in Finland for 16 years and struggled with work-life balance whilst trying to learn one of the most difficult languages in the world. Unless you pass the language exam you can't apply for citizenship - no matter how long you've been here for.
And yet, the right-wing-ish coalition government is making hostile anti-immigration policies and increasing citizenship requirements - which I can't vote against.
I think you’re very unlikely to garner any sympathy here for living somewhere for 16 years without learning the language.
I also think it’s perfectly reasonable for a country to not allow someone who refuses to prioritise integration with the country to vote on loosening those restrictions. It seems the requirement is roughly equivalent to a B2 level.
I’m a bleeding heart leftie, pro migration, pro EU, and honestly I think visa renewals should come with language requirements. An initial visa sure, but after 2 years an a2 in the language should be achievable. There are definitely edge cases (do you require Spanish or Catalan in Catalonia), but if you can’t speak enough of the local
Language after 2 years to be able to get around, you’re not really trying.
I wrote a little about this here [1]. To summarise, the reality of language learning here is that unless you give up your work it's almost impossible to learn - your only opportunities to learn are evening classes which come at a cost of no social life and are completely impossible if you have kids.
It's easy for people to judge, but move here and try it yourself. It's completely different to e.g. France or Spain.
I also don't agree with one of the other commenters. Finnish is objectively more difficult for most people to learn and has its own origins - entirely different from most languages spoken in Europe. The materials are poorly developed due to the population size and lack of people teaching, and the grammar is absolutely insane.
I think I was pretty polite about but I just think you’re looking for excuses. There’s a wild wild difference between being fluent and being able to hold a conversation and go about your day. Nobody is quitting job to learn how to read a menu, or to ask where the batteries are in the supermarket.
> your only opportunities to learn are evening classes which come at a cost of no social life and are completely impossible if you have kids.
One 60 minute class a week is not “no social life”. Having kids is a fair point but at the same time, you’re making time for other things (e.g. blogging) - learning the language of the country you live in should be one of those things. Again, we’re not talking fluency.
I think there’s some good points in your blog post, and your title is catchy - integration isn’t an evening class but the evening class is a prerequisite for integration. If you don’t have one time for one class a week as a prerequisite you don’t have time for any other activities you’d consider “integration” instead
Asking your host country to provide you a four-day working week with a fully funded fifth day just for language study is nuts, especially for a highly-paid engineer.
>This would not be charity. It would be an investment.
Why are you unwilling to make that investment? Is your money situation so tight that you can't work a reduced week without the state paying for it?
This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47007145 - someone who doesn't speak the language of a country immigrates there, and then demands political rights grounded in "how long you've been here for", specifically in order to oppose attempts to limit immigration.
> trying to learn one of the most difficult languages in the world.
There's no real principled, objective way to rank languages by how difficult they are to learn, except in terms of similarity to languages the learner already knows. Finnish isn't any more difficult than English in an objective sense, you just learned one as a small child from your native community rather than as an adult foreigner.
I only wish other countries would implement the same policies. It seems wrong to me that someone should be able to influence the politics of a country they can't speak the language of.
The requirement to getting a Finnish citizenship is knowing an official language, and one of them is Swedish. As far as I know, it's not one of the most difficult languages in the world.
And yet, the right-wing-ish coalition government is making hostile anti-immigration policies and increasing citizenship requirements - which I can't vote against.