Foreigners are strange

Participated in two web forums lately, one English-speaking for foreigners in Finland, one Russian-speaking for, well, Russian foreigners in Finland. I was shocked at how little people knew about laws. One would think that a person who decides to live in another country would read up on it, especially when having problems with residence permits. Or that a person who is in a foreign country married to a foreigner and has a bunch of dual citizen kids would already know the difference between having a citizenship of a country and having a passport thereof. But no. Scary.

Oh well, I enlightened people on the Russian forum about the new Alien law that is now under discussion in Eduskunta the best I could. I'd read the forum for a long time before posting and never even guessed so many of them didn't know about the law.

Also, there are a lot of foreigners in Finland who do not speak Finnish. And I don't mean just new people, I mean ones who'd been here for at least several years. Yesterday I met a girl who is hardly much more than 20, has lived here for 9 years and does not speak the language. I rest my case. At least she appeared to understand the language more or less. It's not that I am pissed off on behalf of Finland (Finns don't seem to mind much, so why should I?), it's just that I can't understand how come people do that to themselves. Oh well, it's their life.

I wonder whether that is just Finland or whether all non-English-speaking European countries have a lot of foreigners who live there for years and never learn the local language?