Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
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I'm fine with immigration, tj444.
In fact, there's several people I want to move here. They, however, can't. See, they're not in need of asylum. They're getting by just fine in the places they're from. They all have skills we could use, but not skills that could be considered indispensable for a given corporation. That means it'll be hell to try to arrange for them to come here, except the ones in Australia (and even then it's a difficult move).
What I'm not fine with, is granting citizenship to an unlimited number of people, without any requirements.
For instance, I strongly suport the suggestion by the Liberal Left party to introduce the requirement that one must have some minimal fluency in either Norwegian or English to get citizenship. Similarly, serious crimes in the period prior to citizenship should exclude the possibility of getting citizenship for a period equivalent to what passes for a life sentence here (21 years), and war crimes prior to coming here should be grounds for expulsion (yes, we have war criminals in Norway, some of which have done well for themselves, others on welfare).
One of the problems with telling people where they can live is precisely citizenship.
If you distinguish between asylum residents, regular residents and citizens you can introduce differentiated requirements. Asylum residents can live in areas that don't support ghetto formation, so as to foster integration. Regular residents (e.g. EU residents here to work) can live in a regular home or designated area (the Romi tend to squat or set up tent camps, so it makes sense to have designated areas, rather than "in the middle of main street"). Citizens can live wherever they like (including outdoors; I'm pissed that we revoke citizenship if you spend two years without 60% of those two years being with a registered address that's a regular home).
Integration is a huge issue, and the only measure we have in place is the homogenizing effect of public education.
Also, note, terrorism is a tiny problem in this regard. Only about a dozen of our new countrymen have been caught in the process of preparing to commit terrorist acts on our soil, and only a few dozen more when you include foreign soil. Few hundred, if you include those travelling to places like Syria to participate in warfare. Few thousand, if you include those funneling funds to groups designated as terrorist groups. Compared to the number present, this is nothing. Alarming, but vanishingly small in the scheme of things.
Serious crime is a greater problem, particularly violence (Eastern Europe and the Middle East), theft (Eastern Europe) and rape (Africa and the Middle East). The disparity isn't huge (between 2-to-1 and 6-to-1 in the relevant populations), but it's significant, and growing. With a birth rate between two-point-something and six for these populations, and less than breakeven for the preexisting population, it's going to get larger unless integration improves. I remember when the word "paki" first appeared as a derogatory term here, and I remember when it disappeared (after intense effort by both police and politicians to break up the ghettos, leading to integration and a drop in the behaviors that led to its use). The term is still in use in the capital. Bouncers are always wary when there's people with an Eastern European accent around.
Similarly, the subjective "under siege" thing causes a lot of friction.
Norway is a pretty progressive place in a lot of regards. We have LGBT marriage. The proposal to allow poly marriage was only defeated because of concerns about immigrant populations and the difficulties in revising the tax code to take those households into account. Pot is essentially legal to use. Women have equal rights and then some. Discrimination, except on the basis of weight, is illegal and on the way out. Elective abortion is essentially free, except sex selective (a matter of immigrant populations, again). Kink is not a disease (though male doms should take care, as the consent laws have been seriously skewed). Prison is focused on rehabilitation. Education is free. And so forth. Violence is rare, the homicide rates are next to nothing, and recidivism rates are in the single digit percents if you exclude (you guessed it) immigrants.
But if an LGBT couple takes a stroll down the streets where Sunni ghettos have formed, then politeness extends as far as usually giving them a "warning" before enforcing the local standards of propriety with violence. Standards the rest of us don't share. In the worst places, an unmarried couple holding hands may be subject to reprisals. A boy was stabbed here, in school, for asking a girl if she had a spare pencil. Turns out she "belonged" to a Middle Eastern fellow, so talking to her was unacceptable. Such incidents are rare, but mostly because everyone gets the message: you follow Sunni customs when you're in Sunni territory. I won't even get into the subject of rape; mostly because it's a huge, nuanced subject.
Perceptions are not helped by a particular mullah stating on national television that Norwegian culture is worthless, that Norwegians have no values or value, and that Norwegian women are all just whores, the latter statement echoed by his wife. Gee, thanks. I'm glad to see his views on appropriate gratitude demonstrated. I'm not sure he remembers that there is a standing death warrant for him and his family in his home country, or that he's living off welfare here. I'm also not sure it was appropriate of him to issue death threats against prominent politicians here, particularly female ones. We're not legally allowed to expel him, though, due to the death warrant in his home country, so he's become something of a religious leader to the scores of Sunni in prison with him.
That sort of thing can only lead to culture clash and violent resentment.
One important point, often underappreciated, is that these aren't bad people.
They're regular people, usually good people, from a culture that is vastly different from ours. People who are, taken as a whole, appreciative of our way of life, who love that Norway is a peaceful and stable country, who do what they can to coexist well and carry their weight through full participation in the workforce. Their original cultures, however, present a challenge when they're transplanted into ours, and particularly when they get to cluster so densely that it becomes possible for them to cease interacting with the existing culture. At that point, we go from a beneficial cultural exchange to the coexistence of two seperate cultures that are fundamentally incompatible. That would go just as badly the other way (and, indeed, if you go to Spain, you'll find a number of "Norwegian" villages where we are the assholes, though that's mostly retirement age folks that don't get up to as much crap as they might've if they were younger).
So, yeah, I do see where our xenophobes coming from, though their analyses are shallow and often counterfactual.
I don't agree with their methods, however, and I don't mind immigration per se.
What I mind is turning a good thing into crap.
IWYW,
— Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: Young Men and Mass Violence - 
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