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Confusing information and poor language training main problems for new immigrants in Estonia

BC, Tallinn, 03.04.2014.Print version
According to a study on Estonia's new immigrants that was made public on Wednesday, foreigners who come to live in Estonia don’t find enough necessary information, the Estonian language training possibilities are poor and local municipalities lack an understanding why they should deal with the issue of foreigners, LETA/Postimees Online reports.

"The complete lack of role of local municipalities came as a big surprise to me," said one of the initiators of the study, Institute of Baltic Studies analyst Kristjan Kaldur. He said that local municipalities lack an understanding why they should hire foreigners and how they should deal with them.

 

Currently the majority of new immigrants come to Estonia from Ukraine and Russia and among EU states, mainly Finland. "Estonia is still attractive for people who live in the East," said Kaldur. "As far as the European Union is concerned, Estonia is relatively unattractive." He stressed that foreign labour is looked for on the basis of skills, not nationalities.

 

Interior ministry chancellor Leif Kalev said that initially the focus in Estonia was on how to prevent big immigration wave and we were very successful in that. Now we are moving in the direction of finding possibilities of how to bring here those people who we want to see here, i.e. specialists. Kalev said that the ministry is starting a number of adjustment programmes, for example there is a plan to support getting kindergarten places, organising Estonian language courses, work fairs and create a web page for foreigners.






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