Many people who have the experience of acquiring skills that are equivalent to at least “effective operational” level (B2+) in a foreign language know that teacher-led education can be useful for beginners, but it is not a success factor for effective language learning at higher levels. Only the pupil himself can bring the most important prerequisites to make that happen: will, motivation, discipline, a stubbornness bordering on phobia, and a lot of spare time. It is a monumental task to acquire such a practical knowledge of a language that it becomes reasonably useful at work and in all other environments and situations you might end up in during your waking time.
Very few of nowadays immigrants to Sweden are sufficiently successful in acquiring the skills needed in the Swedish language to make them employable (neither in the private sector nor in the public), or to function at all in the Swedish society without requiring expensive (paid for by taxpayers) interpreter services. When faced with this problem Swedish authorities and politicians always suggest that more of the same is better. Therefore, as a rule, they suggest more teacher-led language education to address this “issue”. But, “Swedish for immigrants” is only useful at a very basic level and to offer unlimited quantities of it does not change that fact, it only wastes taxpayers money.
Better to send the low-skilled and poorly motivated immigrants back to their native countries where they know the culture and the language and where they have the skills needed to get a job and to function in society. Let’s face it: most of them will never be able to support themselves in Sweden anyway. Not a chance. The shortage of staff and resources in health care and other parts of the welfare-industrial complex would then disappear or be greatly reduced due to the fact that our dear immigrants as a group over utilise many of our common resources but doesn’t deliver their share of the skilled personnel needed to keep things going at a reasonable level.
A recurring mantra from immigration activists is that Sweden needs immigrants because the Swedish population is getting older as a whole and that not enough babies are born to keep all systems going in the near future. But low-skilled “replacements” isn’t a solution, it only makes things even worse as the immigrants themselves also get older for every second, and they bring in their old relatives and their non-working women to Sweden as soon as they have been granted their residence permit.
There is a hump a bit high up right now in the Swedish age pyramid but it will disappear all by itself in a couple of decades. People die you know and the bump consists mainly of the many people that were born as a result of the euphoria immediately after WWII. In the meantime Sweden will have to pay a bit more for keeping our elders safe and sound but that could easily be done by reducing migration of unskilled people to a minimum and redirect the hundreds of billions saved to more useful areas and to reduce the Swedish tax pressure that for nearly fifty years has been among the highest in the world.