During this meeting where Trump said (or perhaps never said) the word 's**thole' and noted the issues with people from such countries....he then turned to suggest the US ought to have more people from Norway.
I sat and pondered over this. While I've never been to Norway (it's on my list), I've seen enough travel documentary pieces and read enough on the Norwegians to have some views. This idea of bringing more Norwegians into the US has a negative angle to it.
1. Over the past decade, with success and stress....Norway has slowly become a major drug empire. It's generally rated as the number two place in Europe for drug-related deaths. So the odds are, if you had a hundred Norwegians entering the US....you'd probably have to drug-test them and discover that 10-percent are dopers.
2. Drinking to excess. Well, yeah....most all folks in the Nordic area (to include those Swedes and Danes as well)....drink excessively. The state taxes the heck out of hard booze and probably helps to prevent some major issues, but you just cross the line with beer instead. You might not want to let some Norwegians into the US who'd just get into serious trouble because of their drunken status.
3. Prejudice values. Folks in Norway tend to brag about their ability to accept social changes (gays, blacks, weird religions, etc). The problem with this is that it's basically centered around Oslo, Bergen, and maybe four other major cities in the country of five million. Once you cross the urban line of those major areas.....you find yourself in small communities where they aren't quiet as accepting as their city-brothers. Yeah, you might find yourself a fair number of bigots, racists, and extremist characters. You probably wouldn't want members of this crowd in the US.
4. Generally, if you watch the travel documentary pieces....just about anything that requires extreme manual labor or is classified as 'nasty-work'....is not performed by a Norwegian. If you have a construction site.....a fair number of the workers will be Poles. If you have some clean-up crew for a train, it'll be foreigners who've come into Norway, and been hired. Norwegians don't do sh**work or things that are beneath their status in life.
5. Generally, if you bring up suppression of people around the world....Norway gets on the list because of the treatment of native people to the north of the country....the Sami folks. In a way, up until the late 1970s....they were pretty harsh on this group of Norwegians.
6. Finally, you come to this issue of personal debt. Norway is a pretty successful country and to provide all the services that you see....they tax the heck out of people. There's the twenty-five percent sales tax....right off the bat, that you notice. The hefty income tax takes a chunk of money. For smokes and booze....more taxes. So the government gives you a lot of free stuff, but if you were a working-class guy, there's a limited lifestyle ahead of you. All of this leads to folks borrowing money to enjoy a few extras in life, and it becomes a major habit, which leads onto significant debt facing most Norwegians.
I'm not saying most Norwegians are trouble-makers...far from it. But if you had a hundred Norwegians at the door and knocking to come in, you might want to evaluate folks and determine that twenty-percent probably should be denied. It might even go past the twenty-percent point.
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