[amoorthy]

Immigrants to any country are a unique slice of the population because they chose to migrate for a better life. Hence immigrants in most countries tend to do well economically (sometimes after a generation). Uncertain that cultural differences are the reason for different economic outcomes you observe.

[seszett]

Swedish speakers in Finland are not immigrants anymore than Dutch speakers in Belgium are, though (the Dutch speaking area also generally does better than the French speaking areas, for a variety of reasons).

[em-bee]

it is interesting to note that since the industrial revolution it was the french speaking part of belgium that flourished due to its steel industry, and the dutch speaking part was the poor one. only when the steel industry stopped being competitive the economy switched away from industry to service where the french part stagnated and the dutch part started to flourish,

so clearly who does better has nothing to do with the language but with the economy and who has the better resources and is more adaptable to serve the current needs.

[boelboel]

There was significant repression on the Dutch language in Belgium not long ago. There was no Dutch university prior to 1930s and courts were solely in french for a long time.To this date there's still some Bruxellois who'll call you Sale Flamand (dirty Fleming) if you speak Dutch in the capital city. It is however way better now than 50+ years ago, my grandfather got beat up for speaking Dutch.

Saying language had no influence on who did better is inaccurate.

[em-bee]

but it's not the language that's the cause here. it's politics. it's who is in power to decide and direct investments. the language's only function here is to divide the people. so yeah, it had an influence in that sense.

but what i meant to say is that language does not have an influence in an absolute sense in that say dutch speakers would always do better than french speakers or something like that because of the language somehow giving them an advantage. the advantage comes from being part of the group that is in power.

[amoorthy]

Ah ok; sorry, didn't realize that.

[nradov]

Which immigrants? A significant fraction of native Finnish citizens speak Swedish as their primary language. It used to be the same country.

[NooneAtAll3]

why did you decide to mention Finland?

[snypher]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48151476

[inemesitaffia]

They are usually richer too.