In the interest of dialogue with the Norwegian society, we wanted someone local to write something about asylum seekers. Who better than the parliamentary leader of the local department of what is generally considered the most hostile Norwegian party to immigrants and asylum seekers to start by explaining their view of asylum seekers?
Tom Cato Karlsen, the Progress Party (translated from Norwegian)
The Norwegian Progress Party (FrP) distinguishes between immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Immigrant is a term for any foreigner moving to Norway, and FrP distinguishes between western and non-western immigrants. Refugees are foreign citizens coming from a conflict area and who are defined as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Norway is committed to receive a given amount of Quota refugees each year through international agreements or according to government decisions. During the recent years Norway has accepted 1000-1200 Quota refugees from different refugee camps around the world. The last group of immigrants, asylum seekers, are foreign citizens who believe they have a right to be granted a residence in Norway on the basis of persecution in their home country because of ethnicity, political activity, religion or sexual orientation.
Most of the asylum seekers coming to Norway don’t have identification papers. This makes it more difficult to be sure of their identity, and FrP believes this constitutes a major risk for the security of the nation. Norwegian authorities cannot guarantee that criminals are not let in to the country. This was discussed among others by the former Secretary-General of the Norwegian Red Cross, Trygve Nordby. Nordby pointed out that in 2006 the Norwegian special police division Kripos investigated around 70 asylum seekers because of war crime.
It is believed that around 20 war criminals arrive in Norway every year as asylum seekers.
To protect the Norwegian society against asylum seekers who are not positively identified, FrP has suggested closed reception centres in Norway. This means that when asylum seekers arrive in Norway, they will be directly transported to a reception centre where they will get a warm bed, food, health services and medicine, in short: everything you need to be well and safe. The only restriction is that they cannot leave the reception centre while their application is being processed and before their identity is ascertained by the Norwegian authorities. When the identity of the asylum seeker is confirmed and the application is processed, there are two alternatives: If a residence is granted, the asylum seeker can leave the closed reception and take part in the Norwegian integration programme. In the opposite case, if the Norwegian authorities reject the application, the asylum seeker will be directly transported out of Norway without the possibility to move freely in Norway. In this way, the society becomes safer, and we also believe that this will prevent that the immigrants that already live in Norway with a valid residence permit will avoid being perceived as baseless asylum seekers, so-called fortune hunters, as many Norwegians perceive them today.
In addition, FrP has spoke up for reducing the total amount of non-western immigrants with permits in Norway. Norway has liberal rules for granting residences on the basis of asylum applications, compared to most of the other European countries. Still, with this in mind, «only» 2400 out of 8100 asylum seekers were granted recidents during the first 6 months in 2009. This shows that 5700 asylum seekers were baseless and were not entitled to be granted a residence in Norway. This is a very high number. FrP wants to limit the amount of asylum seekers from non-western cultures to around 1000 per year. The background for this is that the apparatus of today is not good enough for integrating the non-western asylum seekers that come to Norway every year. The reception system is overloaded, and those who are granted residence are not given good enough opportunities to integrate into Norwegian society. Ghetto-like settlements are created in the Norwegian cities and the unemployment rate is high among groups of non-western immigrants.
Non-western immigrants are mainly immigrants from other countries than most part of Europe, the USA and Canada. These are immigrants with very different backgrounds compared to ethnic Norwegians, where religion, among other things, controls everyday life. This gives major challenges for immigrants in Norway and Norwegians, especially in terms of forced marriages, female genital mutilation and view of women. These are challenges we do not meet with immigrants from western cultures like Sweden, Great Britain, Spain or the USA. These cultures have the same rules and norms that we are used to in Norway. Therefore, it is very important to ensure a good community education for non-western immigrants, so that they will have a better understanding of the Norwegian society, such as norms and rules, what is expected from the citizens in the Norwegian society, the rights and duties one has as a Norwegian and what we expect from each other. FrP believes that a limit of 1000 non-western asylum seekers each year will give an opportunity to provide better conditions and education compared to today’s deficient system. In other words: Quality above quantity.
Tom Cato Karlsen, parliamentary leader, Bodø FrP
Posted on April 23, 2010
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