Thread: Языковая обстановка в Латвии и др.

to Throbert and Kidkboom
The situation in the Baltic States is not equal to the situation when newly come immigrants demand their own language being promoted to the status of official state language. For the 50 years there were several official languages and one of them was Russian but due to nationalistic ideas it was dismantled and people who speak only Russian and were born and lived there for 50 years have lost rights (became non-citizens) from this day ever after.

Imagine a sci-fi case when English is dismantled in US and only those who speak Spanish are the citizens and allowed to vote. Would it be fair to the US people who can speak only English if they became non-citizens without any rights. What about English speaking people aged 50-60. The ability to learn a new language is not easy for them.

Originally Posted by CoffeeCup

to Throbert and Kidkboom
The situation in the Baltic States is not equal to the situation when newly come immigrants demand their own language being promoted to the status of official state language. For the 50 years there were several official languages and one of them was Russian but due to nationalistic ideas it was dismantled and people who speak only Russian and were born and lived there for 50 years have lost rights (became non-citizens) from this day ever after.

Imagine a sci-fi case when English is dismantled in US and only those who speak Spanish are the citizens and allowed to vote. Would it be fair to the US people who can speak only English if they became non-citizens without any rights. What about English speaking people aged 50-60. The ability to learn a new language is not easy for them.

The immigrants in the US haven't shown up in a few days either. Anyway, it took some time for them to create their Spanish speaking community, just like it did for the Russians in the Baltic states. And comparing that to English losing its official status in the US is quite incorrect, it's rather like the Spanish speaking immigrants started demanding the authorities make Spanish an official language.

and people who speak only Russian and were born and lived there for 50 years have lost rights (became non-citizens) from this day ever after.

Please look some posts above - I already said that people who were citizens of Latvia and their descendants before 1940 did not lose anything - they regained their citizenship regardless of nationality, language skills, etc...
Non-citizens have no citizenship - because state (USSR) that gave it to them does not exist anymore - they have never been Latvian citizens.
Everyone lost their USSR citizenship - me included.

I think it is surprising though, that nobody in the EU has complained about it

EU and most of western countries always have stated that Soviet occupation was illegal. Therefore everyone that immigrated here during Soviet occupation is an illegal immigrant.
And since Latvia restored citizenship to everyone that was its citizen before occupation - everything is OK according to international laws.
And more - according to international laws - Latvia has rights to deport Soviet immigrants (like every illegal immigrant) - but we did not do that and never will - we want them to naturalize, learn Latvian and become Latvian citizens.