A friend and former classmate of mine - and one of the smartest people I know - wrote to me in response to my reflections on immigration and pointed out that:
- The Norwegian welfare system has a lot of structural problems - for example, that people work too hard when they have small children and then burn out too soon; or that anyone who has been out on disability for a long time will have difficulty finding new work.
- The debate on the prevalence of crime, welfare fraud, etc., among immigrants is polluted by abuse of statistics - very few of regularly cited numbers are adjusted for economic and demographic factors that might even things out.
In other words, we should be careful about the data we use to draw conclusions about immigrant behavior and attitudes when it comes the Norwegian welfare system.
Fair enough. So then let me ask another question: to what extent are ethnic Norwegian attitudes toward their immigrant neighbors a result of xenophobic prejudice, unreasonable expectations about assimilation, or inadequate integration among the immigrants? And then, why should it even matter? Shouldn't everyone who lives in Norway have the right to live however they want, as long as they don't break laws?
Sylfest Lomheim, who has vowed he made a big mistake in saying that "Norwegians" encompass only "ethnic Norwegians," unwittingly bumped into a much tougher issue, namely what does it mean to be a fully integrated member of Norwegian society?
I wish I had an answer, but I don't. We'd never dream of excommunicating ethnic Norwegian welfare clients who never vote, don't pay their TV license, drink moonshine, etc., from Norwegian society. Yet we are prepared to say that immigrants who collect welfare, keep to themselves, etc. should somehow prove that they want to be part of society, not just benefit from it.
Of course, the classical Greeks put a burden of proof on anyone who wanted to be a citizen; anyone who failed to meet that burden become an inhabitant, but couldn't be a citizen. I doubt we could replicate that approach, but there may be something to be learned there.
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