She noted that the number of arrivals to Latvia is growing rapidly. "There have been 40,000 in recent years. That's a big enough number. As residents of Latvia, we would be interested so that all these people can learn the language and use it," said Pūce.
SIF believes that language learning is one of the basic building blocks of integration, so it is essential to provide the immigrants with an opportunity to learn the language.
“We're at a standstill, you might say. Estonia has a system in place for all arrivals to learn the language. In our case, this offer is very sporadic. We have European Union fund projects that start and end, there are local governments that want to ensure language learning, but there are local governments that don't. People learn this language more on a self-initiative,“ said Pūce.
Therefore, SIF has prepared a proposal in relation to all people entering Latvia learning Latvian.
“Given that there is a budgeting process, unfortunately, it still does not appear in the priority actions, even though SIF has made a proposal for a fourth year that this should be necessary. I hope that this discussion will rise again in the Saeima. SIF has prepared a proposal – in our opinion, all people who come to Latvia and live here for a certain time should learn Latvian. In this way, it would be much better to control both the quality in which these courses are provided and the cultural orientation could be integrated into course content,” Pūce noted.
