Stupid in Huddinge - or: How rigid bureaucracy robs four foreign-born people of their life chances and the IT industry loses talent

Gen, Mizanur, Kazi, Sabina and Omperkash are five computer scientists and IT engineers who have lived in Sweden for between a few months and up to two years. They have studied computer science at KTH, University of Sindh, International Islamic University Chittagong and China Agricultural University, but lack the ingredient needed for them to enter the hot IT job market: knowledge of the Swedish language. However, a given opportunity to quickly complete this is lost to them when they made the mistake of settling in Huddinge.

Like some forty other foreign-born residents of Stockholm County, they have applied for the newly launched SFX IT training program for programmers at C3L in Tyresö. SFX, or "yrkes-SFI", is a concept developed in Stockholm County, which brings together all those who have a certain in-demand professional background for one and the same course. Rather than each individual municipality providing vocational Swedish language training to a few individuals, one municipality takes it upon itself to provide this for all the municipalities in the county, in return for a settlement between the municipalities.

However, in this case, Huddinge has taken a decision not to allow payments for 'guest students' or 'guest workers' to study in another municipality. Perhaps this could be understood as the municipality having to hold back funds and prioritize. But here's the tragedy: there are no savings! Gen, Mizanur, Kazi and Omperkash are in any case entitled to study regular SFI in their own municipality, at basically the same cost, as regular SFI courses generally take longer, and are not focused on IT, so it is rarely adequate as training for those who will work with IT in Sweden, so that additional studies in Swedish are required.

One of the applicants received the following message: "Huddinge municipality has chosen not to fund SFX-IT because the guest student [sic!] has a work permit as a dishwasher at a restaurant in Stockholm."

In other words, the person with a Master in Informatics is asked to continue as a dishwasher instead of looking for something where his academic background comes into its own.

The sum total of this micro example of integration policy: foreign-born people are prevented from acquiring professions that correspond to their education, the IT industry loses valuable skills and the state and municipality lose future tax revenue - without any savings being made in the near future.

Can this stupidity be stopped? The SFX-IT course starts on Monday 4/2.