Immigration Policy, the Scandinavian Model

Any informed observer with a fundamentally-logical mindset cannot miss the incoherence and irreconcilability of the Democratic Party’s hottest policy preferences: identity politics, open borders and socialism.

The United States is, or, rather, once was, a genuine melting pot where immigrants seeking American opportunity and freedoms arrived legally, passed screening and assimilated quickly.

For 150 years, Christians – Protestant and Catholic – Jews, Gypsies, Rastafarians, Buddhists and others arrived from Northern, Central, Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, from Ireland, the Caribbean, Asia and elsewhere, settled, learned English, joined and built America’s working, taxpaying and voting communities while broadening the nation’s aggregate cultural landscape.

There was no publicly-funded “English as-a-second language” instruction for arriving German, Italian, Czech, Hungarian, Yiddish, Hindi, Vietnamese or any other language speakers. Earlier immigrants never adopted cultural/ethnic hyphenations. They became, simply, Americans, while learning more about our history, constitutional government and traditions than most young Americans are taught in public schools today.

America’s “homogeneity” – a common American identity – mobilized otherwise non-homogenous white, black, brown and yellow-skinned citizens to win World War II.

Today, though, liberal Democrats indulge certain races, genders and ethnicities through discriminatory policies such as “diversity” admissions/hiring, transgender public facilities, proscribing “cultural appropriation” and by rewriting history, among other secular, but quasi-religious social-engineering orthodoxies. Through accidents of birth, innocent non-Hispanic white people, nearly two-thirds of America’s population, are effectively devalued, even demonized as “intolerant,” while being expected to shoulder the burden of financing benefits for others.

At the same time they practice identity politics here, Democrats cite the examples of Scandinavian countries as “socialism that works.” But, just as Scandinavian nations’ institutionalized market-based economies aren’t socialist, their demographics don’t align with Democrats’ fixation on identity politics. Scandinavian societies, historically among the world’s most homogeneous relative to race, ethnicity and religion, are struggling with the entry of unassimilated migrants from Africa and the Middle East.

To force assimilation and preserve a national identity, Sweden has cracked down on migrant crime, imposed border control, paid migrants to leave, stepped up deportations, and proposed that migrants learn Swedish or lose benefits.

Norway took a tough-love approach to migrants, accepting few. Norway’s Immigration Minister said, ‘We have a big challenge…to integrate those with permission to stay in Norway to make sure they respect Norwegian values.” The New York Times reported that, in Denmark, “’ghetto children’ [migrants] must be separated from their families for at least 25 hours a week, not including nap time, for mandatory instruction in ‘Danish values,’ including the traditions of Christmas and Easter, and Danish lan uage.”

Sikke en rædsel! (Danish for “how awful!”)

In fact, almost everything the American left has told us about economic, immigration and social policy there is 180 degrees out of phase with Scandinavian reality.

If liberal Democrats wish to import what they perceive to be successful Scandinavian policies, rather than treat their social practices as menu items, why not include border and criminal enforcement, deportations, personal responsibility and assimilation?

If Scandinavian immigration policies are socially acceptable there, why won’t Democrats support them here, too?

https://www.ldnews.com/story/opinion/2019/03/18/immigration-policy-scandinavian-model/3200340002/