Furthermore, a whole 66 percent claimed they were not worried about the crowds of asylum seekers Norway has welcomed in recent years, whereas 36 percent said the country could and should take in more. On the other hand, only 27 percent believed fewer asylum seekers should be accepted, while 34 percent advocated for the current levels to be maintained.
"It's nice to see that folks' attitudes towards immigrants and refugees are mostly positive," Nobel Peace Center director Liv Tørres told Dagsavisen, who rejoiced over the fact that the terrorist attacks amid the refugee influx have not aggravated fears of immigration.
Ipsos's Kristin Rogge Pran explained last year's skepticism with the fact that the news agenda was at that time dominated by the migrant crisis. However, as the worst misgivings about the migrant crisis never materialized, public opinion experienced a rollback to the more positive figures of 2015, she explained. According to Rogge Pran, residents in urban areas were by far more positive towards immigration than countryside dwellers that have less contact with the newcomers.
Earlier this year, the government Brochmann Committee arrived at the startling conclusion that faulty integration policies and unbridled migration were threatening the core of the Norwegian welfare state. Professor Grete Brochmann from the University of Oslo, who heads the eponymous committee tasked with assessing the consequences of mass migration, noted that people with immigrant background tend to have lower employment rates and work fewer hours, thus falling into the low-income category and depend on social benefits. In the report, over a quarter of immigrants and their descendants were found to have persistently low income, as opposed to only 10 percent of Norway's total population.
In the early 1990s, immigrants totaled only 4.3 percent of the Norwegian population. A quarter of a century later, their percentage has risen to 16.3 percent in a nation of 5.2 million. A 2016 forecast by Statistics Norway predicts immigrants to remain a locomotive of Norwegian demographics. Today, migrants account for 90 percent of Norway's population growth, and their number is expected to double from today's 700,000 to 1.4 million by the mid-2040s, when Norway's population is expected to reach the six-million mark.
Never miss a story again — sign up to our Telegram channel and we'll keep you up to speed!