Maybe We Don't WANT More Norwegians!

We're having just a jolly time watching the news lately, between the dummy working for the State of Hawaii who actually triggered a false alarm for an incoming ballistic missile, and the allegation that President Trump referred to certain countries as, well, you know; you've seen the pictures.

It did not take five minutes after the erroneous alert, for morons on the left somehow to blame President Trump for the missile alert, even though it was a state system, not a Federal one.  Even one of their (Hawaii's) congresswomen did that, and you'd think she would know better (... or did she!).

But because blaming the president for the Hawaii alert was pretty stupid to start with, the media and the left (but I repeat myself) turned quickly to statements the president is supposed to have made in a private meeting with a few senators, called to try to reach agreement on an immigration deal that would include protection for people, mostly now adults, brought into the USA as children and who grew up here.

Now, this profanity was leaked by Dick Durbin, the Democrat senator from Illinois, who has a reputation for leaking meeting quotes that were not true, so we won't really know what exactly was said.  And I won't even get into the notion that the quote, which you of course have heard, referred to the countries themselves (i.e., their government and living conditions), not the people themselves.

But what the media are excited about, now, is that there is a way that they can try to characterize the president as a racist.  That's because he was quoted as allegedly asking why we were taking in people from miserable countries like Haiti, and not more from countries like Norway.  The "Norway" reference was, of course, on his mind because (A) we don't take many people from Norway, a civilized country with a stable government, and (B) he had just met with the Norwegian prime minister, so Norway was on his mind.

Let's face it, the point that the president would have been trying to make, if indeed he said something like that, is that our immigration system seems heavily tilted toward what's good for the immigrant and not for our country.  In other words, rather than letting more people in who can add to the USA based on their skills, abilities and training, our system slants toward our being a salvation for people in poverty who would come and be dependent -- while we're $21 trillion in debt.

The problem, of course, is that between the lottery system and the chain migration model, the available slots are crowded by the unskilled and uneducated -- and the problems that other nations want to dump on us, and do so through the "lottery" system.

But let's take President Trump's view for the moment.  He is not, of course, a racist, and would be perfectly happy with a system that took in civil engineers from Haiti rather than street people, no matter what color they were.  That's whether they worked here for ten years and took their improved skills back to Haiti -- or stayed.

The point is that he wants the decision as to who comes here to be based on what they can do for this country, a rather JFKesque reminiscence.  So bringing in people who want to be here, because they have a skill that they can bring here to offer the USA, well, that's a good thing, better than coming in and asking "what the country can do for them."

But Norway ... is that the model he, or anyone else, should use?  After all, Norway is a socialist, welfare-state model that owes its economic existence less to its government-driven collective bargaining and socialized medicine, than to the native work ethic of the Scandinavian.  This is borne out by contrasting the standard of living of Norwegians, which studies have done, with Norwegian-Americans (hint: the Norwegian-Americans come out a lot better, and if Norway didn't have a ton of oil, their people would come out a lot worse, as do Swedes and Finns vs. their American cousins).

So given the immigration of a Haitian civil engineer or a Norwegian one, well, which one would we want?  The Haitian can go to work pretty quickly, as long as he or she can speak English (or find a crew that speaks French).  The Norwegian can, too, and probably already speaks English, since pretty much all Norwegians learn it in school.

The Haitian, however, will come over with contempt for the Haitian government and hoping for a better system here, where an engineer can rise based on capability and hard work.  The Norwegian?  Norwegians must think their socialist model works pretty well, since they don't seem to be changing it -- even though their high standard of living actually predates the socialist institutions in their nation and has gone relatively down since the 1960s.

So maybe the Norwegian is going to come over with innate prejudices that make him think that he knows better.  Maybe he thinks unions and collective bargaining are a solution, rather than that they are actually part of the problem anymore.  Maybe he wants to bring those attitudes here.  Maybe we need less of that.  All things being equal, I might take the Haitian.

And President Trump might, too.

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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