Chancellor Merkel keeps open-gate policy, outrage breaks out

[Teeqoz]

LurkerJ said:

Teeqoz said:

That's not true. Where I work, we have multiple Poles that don't speak Norwegian, and the one I work with the most, a Bulgarian woman, is perfectly capable of making herself understood, but with a broken accent. She's still a better worker than probably any one else that work here.

 

You don't learn a language by sitting on a school bench. You learn it by using it in day to day situations. Except they never are in those say to day situations because they aren't allowed to work before they get their apllication approved (regardless of how well they speak the language), and they also don't have circle of non-refugee friends because like I said, the workplace is the average person's most important social arena.

 

We've also had a Belgian exchange student who lived with us for a year (we were the host family), do you think he learnt Norwegian by taking those two classes each week? No, it's because he was placed in a classroom with no choice but to learn. Bam, two weeks and he knows enough Norwegian to get by, and the learning only goes exponentially further upwards after that.

 

If we are able to get these refugees into the work force so that they can contribute to the value creation in the west, they'll be an immense resource, especially because the part of our population that are elderly is exploding (look at Japan. That's where every western country will be in a decade.)

I agree that learning a language requires more than sitting on a school bench. I am not sure shoving unprepared individuals into the work space is the best way to do it.

I don't know what you do for a living. English is not my native language, and I am always asked to provide evidence of English fluency whenever I apply to work in an English speaking country. 

I'm not saying that you shove unprepared individuals into work. They obviously need the qualifications required to do the job. The thing is though, even in non-english speaking countries, speaking english is enough to get by (at least in Norway, but I have heard that we are supposedly above average. Don't think I know a single person that could at the very least make himself understood in English here). So if the refugees know English to a certain degree, that's certainly sufficient for more physical work (like what I'm doing for my summer job. I repair/make equipment for marine industries, ie. fishing and aquaculture).

 

And it doesn't have to be a big job either, as long as they get something to do, that goes a looooong way in preventing that they just remain unemployed for life once they *do* get the result of their application. Like I've stated multiple times, if you are unemployed for a substantial length of time, the chances that you ever get into the workforce decrease exponentially. So we should make sure that they can do small jobs, like being a waitress/waitor, clean up hotel rooms, anything where you don't need a fluency in the language. It will drastically improve the integration situation and will be a huge benefit in the long run, both economically and otherwise.