Norwegian language test law sent unchanged for parliamentary vote
The parliamentary Committee on Local Government and Public Administration delivered its recommendation to Norway's parliament on the
Changes to the Immigration Act
bill opening the way for it to be debated and voted through on June 6th.
If passed the bill will mean that applicants for permanent residency no longer need to document that they have completed mandatory training in Norwegian language and social studies up to the most elementary A1 level, according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
READ ALSO:
How changes to Norway's requirements for permanent residence will affect you
Instead, applicants will need to take a test proving that they can speak Norwegian at the slightly more advanced A2 level, defined as being the point at which people can understand simple everyday language and express themselves on basic topics.
In its report, a majority of the MPs on the committee, who represent all of Norway's political parties, said they support the changes, which they said would "facilitate automated case processing in the immigration administration", making it a "good efficiency measure".
The only opposition came from members representing the populist, anti-immigration Progress Party, who argued that the language requirement should be raised still higher to the upper intermediate B2 level, enough to interact with "a degree of fluency and spontaneity".
The committee ignored the
concerns raised in the consultation by the Language Council of Norway, the charity Caritas and several others
that the stricter demands proposed would cause anxiety and so hinder integration while also effectively barring immigrants with limited prior schooling and low literacy from permanent residency.
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The bill also includes new limits to family reunification for immigrants with more than one wife, and clarifies the legal basis for financial support for return or repatriation.
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