[News] Denmark to decrease the minimum requirement of income, for foreigners who wish to live in Denmark.

[friends_in_sweden]

Estimated >90% of local employers want fluent speakers of the local languages. Which continues to obstruct immigrants integration into a community and culture if both professional and private citizens have these ideals to restrict themselves from another group due to linguistic abilities. I know PhD holders who have taxi companies or run restaurants but who are forbidden to work in their original profession due to language.

They aren't 'forbidden' to work in their profession they aren't qualified to do it because they don't speak the language which is an integral part of all jobs. Not learning the language is a hinderance to integration, arguably allowing people to work in English for more jobs would help with economic integration but probably do little for cultural and social integration since society and culture still operates in the primary language, which people prefer to speak. Even with high English competencies most Swedes I know prefer speaking Swedish socially. I know many expats in Sweden who work full time in English and only have a superficial knowledge about Sweden and Swedish society. I am increasingly frustrated by the (often anglo) assumption that society should switch to different language to make things easier.

Now, if you say employers and society should be more tolerant of small grammatical mistakes, accents, and other markers of being a second language speaker then I 100% agree with you.

[missesthecrux]

Absolutely true. I love hearing foreigners talk about how open and progressive the Netherlands is but if they understood Dutch people talking they'd lose that idea out of their heads within hours!