Airborne_Again wrote:
If you exclude gang criminality, violent crime rates in Sweden have been dropping steadily since the 1970s.
I imagine you could make this sort of argument for most developed countries. Certainly from what I read in the UK gangs seem to be behind a lot of the violence and problems, shootings, knife attacks etc.
Off_Field wrote:
They’re not going to be winning any diversity awards
Didn’t know there was a competition. We are who we are, and don’t need anyone telling us about our “ethnicity” in any sort of way.
Off_Field wrote:
Factbook puts norway at 83.2% Norwegian (including about 60’000 Sami)
Sami is a distinct ethnic group with a separate language that is completely different from any Scandinavian Language. They even got their own parliament, their own national day. They have lived here for several thousand years. They live in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
Off_Field wrote:
Religion in norway is supposedly 71.5% church of Norway
OK? never heard about the “church of Norway”, but I assume it is an English translation of something. Today, the biggest religion has a distinct green taint to it
Off_Field wrote:
I imagine you could make this sort of argument for most developed countries.
Yes, I believe it is a general trend. My point was that the gang criminality is a new phenomenon and authorities really don’t know what to make of it. There is nothing like it in other European countries with similar concentrations of immigrants, e.g. Germany.
LeSving wrote:
Off_Field wrote:Religion in norway is supposedly 71.5% church of NorwayOK? never heard about the “church of Norway”, but I assume it is an English translation of something. Today, the biggest religion has a distinct green taint to it
I take it he refers to Den norske kirke.
In Scandinavia membership in the traditional lutheran churches is very much disconnected from actual religiosity. Many people are members for reasons of tradition or culture without actually being christian. About 65-70% of Swedes are members of a christian churches while less than 50% identify as christians. Various surveys get different results as the exact formulation of questions can make a big difference, but in the range of 46–85% of the population are atheists/agnostics/“non-believers”.
LeSving wrote:
Sami is a distinct ethnic group
60k in a population of over 5 milion isn’t a great deal. My point about relative homogeneity stands. Certainly in comparison to the US.
Airborne_Again wrote:
My point was that the gang criminality is a new phenomenon and authorities really don’t know what to make of it.
I guess you mean for Sweeden? Gangs have been around for well over 100 years, and no doubt police have been struggling for a similar amount of time.
Transportation ease and better communications I guess makes the problem grow quicker and get more widespread more easily.
Airborne_Again wrote:
I take it he refers to Den norske kirke.
I know, I just haven’t seen or heard the English translation before, didn’t know they had any.
Off_Field wrote:
My point about relative homogeneity stands. Certainly in comparison to the US.
The US, the entire American continent, is of course special due to the history of immigration from all over the world the last few hundred years. It just that the exact same thing has happened in the entire European continent, but over several thousand years, sometimes gradually, sometimes fast. It has never stopped. Sometimes net immigration, sometimes net emigration.
The fact is that we are today 5.3 million citizens. Of these, 950k are immigrants (as defined by SSB as immigrants and their children. After that they are not considered immigrants no more, but simply Norwegians). That’s nearly 1/5 of the population. Some 100-200 years ago the situation was opposite. Then 1/3 of the population emigrated to North America. it has always been like that, waves of immigration and emigration. And I mean always, since the place was covered in ice and unfit for any life whatsoever. There are always people trying to paint a picture of homologous “ethnicity” for some purpose, but that doesn’t mean such pictures are just nonsense factually speaking.
From here, The net migration rate for Norway for 2010-2015 was 8.8 per thousand. For USA it was 3.2
Off_Field wrote:
60k in a population of over 5 milion isn’t a great deal
No, it’s nothing compared with the net immigration in the last 50 years. But this is a different thing completely. Those 60k are those who consider themselves part of the Sami culture today. The Norwegian state tried to eradicate that culture some 50-100 years ago, due to some misplaced belief in cultural “unity” or whatever. As I said, the state did have some “success” doing this. The Sami parliament is a direct counteract to this. Factually, the Sami culture was basically the same as Norwegian culture, except a few “branches” who kept their their rather ancient way of life, rather isolated from the general population. The large majority were “coastal Sami” and had since long been assimilated and mixed into the general population (or the other way around), except maybe at a couple of a places.
I recall we did this debate some years ago. One factor which can be more important than numbers, or percentages, is how easily someone arriving illegally (or arriving legally and over-staying their visa) can disappear into the community. On the Continent this is generally not easy, due to the ID card requirement. In the UK, any attempt to make any ID carriage mandatory has always been a hot potato, so it is a popular destination for people who are (or become) illegal. It also has a language which is widely used around the world, to which many have been exposed no matter where they live (even if mainly by watching American movies ). And Brits are generally welcoming people, which is not the case everywhere. My family came to the UK (in 1969) via having the opportunity of a legal visit, but we stayed in the UK (applying for asylum, etc) primarily due to the language, and the welcoming people.
Peter wrote:
In the UK, any attempt to make any ID carriage mandatory has always been a hot potato, so it is a popular destination for people who are (or become) illegal.
In my opinion the problem in the UK is not the requirement to carry an ID with you (police can check the database against the name you gave them if they need to do an ID challenge) but the fact that unlike lots of other countries an adult does not have to have a passport issued at least once. Or any other ID. That some people live with no passport, no ID, only a birth certificate.
I don’t think the requirement to have or carry an ID plays much of a role when it comes to illegal immigration. Germany famously has a requirement to be able to identify yourself with official documents (often misinterpreted as requirement to carry the national ID card at all times even by locals) and the yet with the EUs Eastward expansion of 2004 and the Migrant Crisis of 2015 came lots of illegal immigrants, some of whom have even returned after having previously been deported…
Overall, it does not seem to be very difficult to illegally enter and stay in the country.
