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by logifail 1531 days ago
> Having dual nationality was marked as a big risk indicator

Dual nationality indeed has its ups and downs. FWIW, our children have dual nationality, and on top of that, are all bilingual.

On enrolling them in their first school the school insisted on tweaking the enrollment data we'd submitted to list the locally-spoken language second, and so put the non-local language first, as "mother tongue" (and yes, that's exactly how it's described round here <sigh>). This meant the school would get extra money from the government from a pot of money intended to support migrant kids with language issues.

The first time this happened we pushed straight back and asked to get this corrected (all our kids were born locally and speak the local language and dialect like everyone else round here), but the school wasn't having it. They couldn't understand why we didn't want to support the school getting extra money.

What did we learn from this? If the incentives and/or system are broken by design, it can get very hard for anyone wanting to get the system corrected later.

2 comments

> but the school wasn't having it

That's rude. I would probably consider getting the school to communicate this in writing, and then report it for fraud at some point; when the kids leave the school, or when I'd be sure it couldn't cause any issues for the kids...

> I would probably consider getting the school to communicate this in writing

You would only catch the stupidest, most pitiable people with this trap.

How would they now? By no means those dual nationalities are centrally managed. And therw is no obligation to state a second cotizenship on any papers. Disclaimer: Dual citizenship kids in Europe.
> And therw is no obligation to state a second cotizenship on any papers

You're probably right re: citizenship but this is about language, how could one "hide" being bilingual, especially if we're talking about a young child?

(Even in kindergarten all my daughter's friends are 100% aware that she and I speak a language when we're communicating solely with each other that isn't the language my daughter uses the rest of the time in kindergarten.)

Being bilingual is impossible to hide, that's true. My son had intensified German lessons as well, being bilingual with German as one of those. He was not amused, it was free private German lessons so us as parents didn't complain.