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Immigrants come looking for work

August 29, 2011  

Immigrants from the European Union (EU), the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand made up fully two-thirds of the roughly 50,000 persons who arrived in Norway from outside the Nordic area last year. Most were hoping to find a job.

With Norway’s economy remaining strong at a time when other countries are suffering serious debt problems and high unemployment, Norwegian employers are attracting applicants from outside the traditional Nordic area. State statistics bureau SSB (Statistics Norway) said immigration for work-related reasons remains high.

Most from Poland
The Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, in addition to Norway) have traditionally made up the majority of non-Norwegian job seekers but an easing of rules covering work permission for residents of many European countries boosted work immigration, according to SSB.

A total of 31,200 persons from outside the Nordic countries moved to Norway last year with the intention of seeking work. They came mostly from the EU and European countries covered under the European Free Trade Association (22,000) but included new arrivals from the US, Canada, Australia and News Zealand. Work permission rules are tougher, though, for immigrants from outside the EU, so many of them came for reasons of family unification including marriage to a Norwegian.

The largest single nationality seeking work in Norway continues to come from Poland, comprising 10,300 persons, 9,900 of whom registered with local authorities as coming to Norway for reasons of work. The next largest groups of work immigrants came from Lithuania, Germany and Latvia.

Asylum seekers decline
The numbers of persons coming to Norway to seek asylum declined slightly, to 6,200 or around 12 percent of the total number of non-Nordic immigrants. Most came from Afghanistan, Eritrea and Somalia.

All told there are around 158,000 persons with refugee background now living in Norway, according to a new overview from SSB. They make up 3.2 percent of Norway’s total population and 26 percent of total immigrants.

Persons who came to Norway as refugees from Iraq and Somalia made up the largest single groups, with 20,400 and 18,900 respectively.

Views and News from Norway/Nina Berglund
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  • SteelMagnolia69

    Get out while you have the chance! Run like the wind! Don’t be duped by the Leftist propaganda, you’re not going to have a better life here unless you’re seeking asylum from a war-zone, or leaving some impoverished developing world village. In all other cases you’re better off sticking it out where you are. If you’re leaving the USA, Australia, or Germany for a better life in Norway, you’re making a huge mistake. Don’t say you weren’t warned. If you’re marrying a Norwegian get them to move where you are. It’s amazing how many Australians I’ve met in Norway who moved here for a spouse, it’s like an epidemic. The poor saps are almost always desperately missing Australia.

  • kiwirob

    I’d love to know the exact number of Kiwi’s moving here, surely there’s not that many of us marrying Norwegians?

    • http://www.facebook.com/rneve Robert Neve

      Moving to Norway for partners is one of the biggest reasons I have seen for people coming here but whatever jibberish Steel was going on about I don’t know. I moved here from the UK 2 years ago and haven’t once regretted it. Nobody, it seems, understands less how lucky they are than some Norwegians.

      • SteelMagnolia69

        The “jibberish” I was going on about was that almost all the Australians I’ve met here complain incessantly, and they wish they could move back home.

        That’s been my experience, yours may be different.

        • Southernfjord

          They can’t possibly complain as much as you.

  • SteelMagnolia69

    Southernfjord, are you an American politician? I only ask because you seem to be entirely incapable of arguing the issue and instead resort to making cheap points about the person who is pointing out the issue. The issue here being people from developed countries moving here and then regretting it, not who happens to complain more.

    By the way, I used to post on this forum as Richard Enn Johnson (before they started using Disqus), and most people (especially Kiwirob) were in broad agreement with my obeservations or “complaints” about the folly of socialist policies in Norway and the nonsense that is the “quality of life index”.

    I would rather complain too much about the problems I see in society than be just another mindless drone who thinks big brother can do no wrong. Incidentally, once in a while I vent online, but I spend much more time listening to the observations of other expats from all walks of life, and I definitely see a pattern.

    “The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”
    -George Bernard Shaw

    • http://www.newsinenglish.no The Moderator

      Why did you change your name when we started using Disqus?

      • SteelMagnolia69

        I prefer to remain anonymous when discussing sensitive political subjects – the idea being that we should discuss the issues, not who I am or where I’m from etc. When I posted as Richard Johnson many people assumed I was American (I’m not), and when I made a critical comment about Norwegian politics I got too many replies that basically said “yeah but, it’s better than America” so that’s why I needed a more nondescript name.

  • Gibcdi

    What’s with all the America bashing? This is a post about jobs and immigrants. I’m rather bored of attacks on America as either counter attacks for criticism of Norway (both have stuff that merits criticism) or as completely shameless personal attacks on other commenters. Or for that matter why question Aussie girls’¨virtues or lack thereor? Why not post ideas for improvements or even criticisms of their own merit?

    Some revealing inferences that can be made from the Sentral Statistis Bureau (http://www.ssb.no/) in the tables under the section for immigration that hint at a whiff of tokenism for us “foreigners”…keeping in mind that the classification of foreigner extends to Norwegian born children of 2 foreign parents. This, of course, meaning that the child of a pakistani guest worker and his imported bride, yield a fully integrated token “foreigner” into the work pool.

    There also seems to be a reticense on the part of Norwegians- which I have seen in my extended family- to deny that there might be insidious and covert discrimination on their part, whereby they take it as an affront to their idealized sense of self as multi-lateralist, humanitarian and enlightned citizens, refuting discrimination as a whole by pointing to one or two “friends” that happen to be muslim or from some exotic locale. even the numbers in “attitudes toward foreigners” are self reported and self sensored.

    Therefore there doesnt seem to be any willingness to discuss whether protectionism or fend off less tangible barriers to integration due to the fact that many first generation immigrants dont have the contact networks that may help get them jobs, which is a major obstacle to integration.

    In any case it might be better to say that if you are seeking jobs in specialized fields such as Oil/geoengineering/IT, there are openings available. I have heard that if you are from outside the EU and brought in under a work visa, employers necesarily have to guarantee you a salary of NOK 500,000 annually. This limits the pool to only those of American, Canadian etc origin to those who can get those jobs. Mixed marriages count as “norwegian” or non-imigrant households, however, and therefore the American households tend to skew higher on income than even the average non-imigrant households, given that they depend on the work visa.
    The high salary requirements are of course, a mechanism whereby immigration authorities can force the companies to prove that they need to import skilled labor as opposed to recruiting from within Norway. Otherwise, some companies might import low-mid level labor as an alternative to higher cost home-grown labor.

    There of course should be much-needed dialogue on whether some level of protectionism for Norwegian labor is warranted.

    In other sectors, there labor conditions seem to be creating a two-tiered system of temps and people that seem to be on leave of one sort or another. It is my conjecture that the low unemployment could be explained by a confluence of the high sick-rate, the unusually high number of people in post graduate education with a lack of job experience (and therefore not counted as unemployed), and those in part time employment thanks to these agencies such as Adecco, Manpower and the like. As I understand, EU workers dont need visas to work but need to be employed within 3 months of moving here, or that some, like Germans, can continue to receive benefits from home. It seems that Polish workers, with a larger diaspora of contacts, seem to have mobility and go back and forth through porous borders. These seem to be the sort of workers picked up by temp-agencies, with the lower salaries that statistics show Eastern Europeans, and other groups, tend to get.

    • SteelMagnolia69

      “What’s with all the America bashing?”

      Umm… what America bashing?? I have not found a single sentence in the comments or in the article that would remotely qualify as America bashing. Please clarify.

      I found your comment very informative and interesting, apart from the “America bashing” part.

      • GIBCDI

        To: Mr. SteelMagnolia69, Ref: America Bashing.

        Please see your own, “Are you an American politician?” comment to Southernfjord as if politicians of all creeds and colors didn’t make cheap personal jabs.

        In reference to the “yeah its better than America” statements, or “go back to America comments” that tend to pervadereaction to negative comments about some aspect of Norwegian life as a whole within the publication, my greater point is that the criticisms made need to be taken on their own merits, and the logistics and feasability of proposals to be discussed logically.

        What annoys me personally, as a very proud American, is that comparisons to Norway tend to overlook crucial aspects such as scale- imagine managing a rather developed country of around 300 million democratically. Then there is America’s history and concept of nationality, importantly providing a valve for European inmigrants that could integrate by believing in the relatively general political ideals (though admittedly not always acted upon- see slavery, McCarthyism, Chinese Exclusion Act of 1914) without necesarily having to conform to a ethnic national principle that was very much responsible for the European horrors of World War II among other ills, some of them still facing Europe.

        • SteelMagnolia69

          Thanks for clarifying, I’m sorry you took my comment that way, and now that you mention it I can see how it could be misconstrued.

          However, in defense of it, I absolutely agree that all creeds and colors take cheap shots, but you have to admit that American politicians (of all creeds and colors) are particularly notorious for ignoring the issues and focusing on petty squabbles, especially of late. I’m fairly certain most Americans would agree with that statement, and I’ll still contend that it is a pretty big stretch to qualify that remark as “America bashing”.

          I agree with you completely that people deflect from issues of Norwegian politics on this site by pointing to flaws they see with American policies, but I just didn’t see any of that on this particular thread.

          • gibcdi

            I agree many politicians on the American “loony” side are given more of a microphone and spotlight than they should mostly cause of dependence on news channels to entertain sufficiently and fill up news cycles in order to boost revenues and ratings…but now I am getting wholly off topic. For the record , I wasn’t particularly referring to your comments about politicians but to the general commentary found on discussion threads of publications all over the world.

            I am merely stating that policy solutions or criticisms of Norway should be seen with the view as to whether or not they may be improved within the context of Norway’s socio-economic conditions. With regards to this article it seems to me that one cant blame immigrants for trying to better their lot. In fact it is often heroic what refugees or economic migrants from lower skilled tiers go through and the challenges they overcome for these opportunities in a foreign land. (See work by Joseba Achotegui on the Ulysses syndrome about the psychology of the immigrant experience- most work is available in Spanish, if you are interested.)

            What is not being had is a very heated debate from Norwegian policy makers on the issue of border control and protectionism, from what I suspect is problem related to their sense of identy as humanitarians and wanting to punch above their weight on the international stage.

            To engage in a discussion about labor market protectionism undermines the identity because to be protectionist necessitates setting forth criteria that distinguish, and therefore, discriminate between groups – usually to the advantage of one’s one national/ethnic group which in turn is seen as racist or at least against the enlightened principles of equality among humans. And closing off borders- such as a retraction of Schengen- in a sense precludes Norway from being urbane internationalists-by depriving Norwegians of their say in fora where their input or vote is not proportional to population.