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Now I have never really liked to start a thread here in the lounge, but this time I feel that I have something on my heart to tell and share with you.

I and my family currently live in Denmark, Copenhagen where I have my little thing with game development going on and a small webmaster job. Now all is fine even though the gov here is rather right wing with its language policy and assimilation policy toward all foreigners living in Denmark. I had read about all this in the newspapers and followed it from a distance for many years as I and my family lived in Sweden for many years.

Now we live in Denmark and have two kids. They both speak the danish(mother tongue) and mandarin fluently. Our girl on 7 years old is one of the best in all classes(elementary 2nd. next week) so no problem here I guess. In fact she is way beyond the level of the class she has been attending(teachers own words).

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Now what is the problem then? Well we received a letter this morning from the local government of Copenhagen:

Dear Parents

I have been informed that your child, (insert name here) born on the x. February 2010, does not attend kindergarten. Children who do not attend kindergarten must take part in a language assessment. Children with another native language than Danish must attend language stimulation classes if they do not speak Danish.

To learn whether your child is in need of language stimulation classes, we invite you to a meeting on xx..xx.2013 at xx:xx a.m. for a conversation about language assessment and language stimulation with the educators from the Language Stimulation.

What the (some bad word here) O_o

Now I then called them and told them that our child indeed DO speak Danish and that their mother tongue is Danish. He then excuse it with that because my wife is a Swedish citizen(Chinese origin) they had sent this letter due to the fact that many kids who had lived in Sweden and moved to Denmark did not speak Danish. I then corrected the person telling him that Swedish and Danish is almost the same and very much related. He then apologized and said it was a mistake and that the letter should not had been sent for us.

Now I have checked out this "law" and found out it was forced through by a nationalistic right wing party in our parliament a few years ago. A something for something so to say. I also found out that if foreigners like Americans, Chinese etc. do not show up for this "conversation meeting" the local gov holds its right to cancel all further child money payments. For me it is fine(do not really them anyway).

Now what is all the fuzz here about then? Well for me this letter is a great insult to many fine hardworking foreigners living here in Denmark.

How dare the gov play the language police like that?

How dare the gov demand that homes with small English(or other languages) speaking kids not even reached the age of 4 years "must" attend language stimulation?

The so called "language stimulation" is around 30 hours running around in a kindergarten.

That should never be demanded but only put as an offer.

In fact I find this letter to be very disturbing and feel sad for many foreigners in Denmark with kids who wish to see their children grow up around them while they are small and not putting them in a kindergarten.

Have any of you out there seen something similar in your countries?

Is this the language and assimilation policies of your nations?

Do you feel this is discrimination of foreigners?

Feel free to speak your opinion but keep it civil

Also read this article about the assimilation issue: http://www.heptagonpost.com/node/51

edit: missed a "not" and a "own" misspelled, also added a link for a fine article about the assimilation issue in Denmark

I think this is overall a good thing even though it came across badly in your case. Foreigners can be, if you allow me to say, a complicated issue in a welfare state.

In Germany (which is not very far from Danmark), we have more or less two kinds of foreigners. One kind came to work and live in better conditions, learned (more or less, each to their ability) the language, and all in all they're valuable members of society. Working hard, earning their lives, and being accepted by almost everyone (sure, there's always some people who hate everyone except themselves, but they're few).

The other kind, and unluckily an increasing part nowadays, are people who have no intent whatsoever to learn the language, or integrate, or respect the local culture or laws. I'm not even talking about "adopting" the culture, I'm talking about respecting it at all. Not few of these live off welfare and not few of them are criminals. You can tell where they live too, it's the streets where cars burn at night and where the police does not dare enter. But of course you're not allowed to say that or you're a Nazi.

The real problem (and the thing most normal citizens cannot understand and are having a more and more serious problem with) is that even someone who is a criminal and doesn't plan to integrate, even someone who is a radical agitator that openly proclames that his goal is to destroy the state, has the same rights as everybody else, which includes welfare, child money, etc. There exist several people here who openly and prominently run something that you can only call terroristic unions -- and they live from wellfare, and they are protected in what they are doing because of "religious freedom".

Thing is, in Denmark, you are allowed to think (or say) that something is not quite right with this approach, and that's basically what the state is saying here, too. The state does not know whether you're the "good kind" or "bad kind" of foreigner, but sure enough they don't want to feed the bad ones.

Basically, what the Danish government guy told you is that if you want to live in their country, you'll have to accept a minimum set of conditions. They expect you to learn their language, and they expect your children to learn their language. Otherwise, they give you no child money. Note that they're not telling you "go home", and they're not expelling you or any such thing.

So, apparently there was a misunderstanding or a misinformation, and I can understand that you may have upset about it, but I think all in all it's the correct approach.

I think Samoth is spot on...

I'm from Denmark and native.

The issue is that some foreigners, especially the Muslims, never let they children go to school, instead they do home teaching and these children may have serious language issues later in life when they need to find a job in Denmark.

It basically comes down to, as Samoth also commented, we try to protect the future of our country in terms of workforce and making sure our money isn't wasted on fostering people who don't want/capable of contributing to the country later in life. Having said that, I am sorry that you should receive such a letter when it was clearly not needed, but we are only people and they acted on what they knew - in this case they knew to little about you and your family situation.

@samoth

Thanks for your answer. You reply in a very polite and civilized way. Perhaps I forgot to tell that I am a Dane too

In fact I got a letter from the local government telling me that my 3 years old son's mother language is not Danish, even though I am a Dane

I got it because his mother is a Swedish citizen. Now I have lived for 7 years in Sweden and no gov sent us such a letter regarding our daughter as they see Danish and Swedish like almost the same language. It is actually. I should know as I have translated between Swedish and Chinese on several occasions

Also what do my or any other foreigners kid's level of Danish has to do with crime? We are talking about 3 years old children here

Surely you can see this is rather harsh and odd

If you are from Denmark, then i don't know why you are surprised, you should know by now that the danish government is really bad at handling social stuff. ;)

@samoth

*snip*

Also what do my or any other foreigners kid's level of Danish has to do with crime? We are talking about 3 years old children here

Surely you can see this is rather harsh and odd

Seems like it's not really aimed at the kids, but rather at the parents who don't integrate. A sign of a family that intends to fully be a respectful and productive member of the society is that they integrate their children into the culture and society of their adoptive nation. They teach their children the language, they teach them the laws, the help them become a citizen. Seems like, just as samoth describes, such policies as you speak of are aimed at those families that don't integrate. They come to their new country, they refuse to speak or learn the new language, they build their little enclaves like a mini version of the place they came from, they do nothing to help their children become citizens of the new place. Such can be seen as a financial burden in a welfare state, because they often only take and do not give back.

"Legalized discrimination" of course isn't a good solution to this problem, but it certainly beats no solution at all. Just witness the rising tide of resentment and anger here in US as we transition (badly) to a welfare state, one with very few checks at all on who can collect welfare and under what conditions, and certainly with no requirement whatsoever to be a legal citizen, to integrate into the culture, or to in any way shape or form become a productive and contributing member of society. It's madness, and leaders should try to limit that madness (unless, of course, their political power comes from fostering the madness, manipulating the welfare masses for political gain, and poisoning the entire nation in the process).

In Australia the required language to learn is US English because no one knows how to change the language settings on their computers :(

A lot of EU countries are currently dealing with 'immigration noise', typically we (UK) hear about Denmark being the worst next to us (us as in UK not US), over here immigration is one song that is on repeat. France and Germany have they fair share of noise too, I am sure Sweden and Netherlands did too as well but maybe got over it or something.

Anyway it results in all sorts of rules and regulations. Over here politics is far more messy than just immigration though, but as long as there is noise there will be some bills presented that will be controversial.

My point is, its probably a new thing and you shouldn't consider it something racist or offensive, in time Europe will heal and we will go back to hating the rich instead of foreigners, until that happens it seems attractive to blame all our problems on foreigners :D:D I say this as a conservative too ;) I suppose you can complain or even lobby your local MP

That "Learn Danish or w/e" rule is similar to one we are pushing but I don't think it applies to EU nationals and I think it is more "you cant live here as a resident if you cant speak English" which doesn't seem like a bad thing depending on how effective it is

I haven't had much experience with immigration and the only foreigners I see are overly attractive European neighbours (something I can safely say I don't have any issue with at all), yet immigration is one of the two biggest things you will hear here, the other being the EU and im sure Denmark is making noise about that too.

The language thing is kinda curious, since enforcing a single language on immigrants kinda goes over the fact that national borders aren't actual language barriers.

I mean, surely at least some of the locals are influenced by surrounding countries, its not like setting a border declares "Lo and behold our mono culture from this line and beyond!". It doesn't works like that, culture doesn't follows international regulations.

I think that the "culture" thing ends up being just the people in charge of enforcing the "national culture" actually enforcing what they think its their national culture, ignoring the other, still national, still inside their borders, culture that they do not know/don't consider "national". Which is bollocks of course.

Officially you could say that my country speaks spanish, unofficially you'll find a lot of variations even in the same country, and quite a few words inherited from italian immigrants in the last century, you can find even completely different languages that native people speak. And we have no right to take that from them, even if spanish is now the "dominant" language. Hell, they could probably trace their families centuries before my ancestors came to this country.

In this case, for the people enforcing the law your family isn't "local" enough DwarfKing. Hopefully most of the other country won't think like that of you.

I think that this kind of "legalized discrimination" if you want to call it that prevents or at least slows the development of a more serious racist movement.

For someone from the worker class who ends up with a salary well below 1000 per month after tax and social insurance etc. and who needs to pay 500-600 for the apartment and another 100 or so for water and electricity, it is hard to understand why someone who doesn't even bother to learn his language may live in his country without working, living off welfare -- which the worker has to pay for (and... welfare is equal or higher than the salary of a worker).

For the same guy, it is hard to understand why his children have to go to a class where they don't learn anything because class goes by the slowest learner, which is the children of that same foreigner guy who doesn't want to learn the language.

This slowly but very steadily leads to widespread hate and problems that are eventually impossible to solve, and end in violence.

Such a thing as the "legalized discrimination" enforcement of learning the language is an attempt to prevent that from going the worst possible route. Maybe it's not the best attempt, but they're trying.