My Blog

There’s a very informative article at The Local (written and very well by Melissa de Sieni I must add) detailing reforms to be made on the SFI (Svenska för Invandrare) program in Sweden.

SFI is a free Swedish language course that it is offered as a “welcome” gift to immigrants. Beware Swedes bearing gifts, though, because its merits are quite contentious, as the views presented in the article show.

My own view is that, however noble the intentions, the program is abused by many people that can’t/won’t work to claim assorted subsidies and stay on welfare. The Swedish state is also to blame as it uses SFI (and plenty of other courses it has to be said) as a silver bullet to artificially decrease the unemployment rate figures. Because if anyone believes the unemployment rate to be 6.3% (figures from ’05) then I have a well preserved bridge over the Göta canal to sell.

Language courses do seem to be the perfect place to court potential husbands, though. Several years ago I took an amount of hours of Swedish and in day one, just after sitting down on a table full of young women of different continents, I was approached with a question. The first thing I was asked was not my name. It was also not where I was from. The pressing question they had was if I was married. I remember trying to breathe calmly and thinking to myself to prepare for a bumpy road ahead. Bummer.