Turning with the populist wind on immigration?

FrP (The Progress Party) has steadily gained on the opinion polls in the past years. According to some polls, it is now larger than Ap (The Labour Party). With the growth of FrP, the other parties will inevitably have to take it more seriously than what has been the case in the past. The rise of FrP has long been something that has kept many an Ap-politician awake at night.

There are two ways that the parties on the center-left stage can respond to the ascent of FrP. For one, they can try to capture voters by launching policies that resemble the most popular policies on the right. Alternatively, they can further emphasize their left-of-center position, and try to educate the public of the follies of many of FrP's suggestions.

Although e.g. the leader of SV (the Socialist Left Party), Kristin Halvorsen, has stuck her head far down in the ground and claims the opposite, it seems that the population is drifting right in their support for political parties. The opinion polls show this trend quite clearly.

If the growth of the parties on the right could pull the other parties slightly towards the right, that could in my mind be a positive thing. For example, if it could soften up the stiff resistance to anything that smacks of privatization, I would welcome that very much. That would not be the case if it happens in the more populistic areas, like immigration or spending of the oil fund money. And that is precisely my fear, and something we might have seen signs of recently with Ap toughening up it's stance on immigration.

Even though we need to shoulder our responsibility when it comes to accepting refugees from conflict-ridden areas, there also needs to be limits to immigration. We cannot simply open our borders up and accept anyone and everyone. A small society like Norway simply does not have the capacity to deal with too many immigrants and refugees. The last couple of years, Norway have received from 5.000 to 6.500 asylum seekers annually. Recent research suggests that asylum seekers, especially young ones, are being very well integrated and that they are not any unreasonable burden on the Norwegian society (i.e. welfare state). This confirms that Norway is perfectly capable of absorbing this number of refugees.

Our Prime Minister's tightening up of immigration rules was based on estimates that we could be faced with a more than doubling of the number of asylum seekers next year. It could be debated whether we would be able to responsibly absorb that many. But if this is a trend towards a more populistic line from Ap, that would be very, very sad. To abandon responsible policies is not good at all, and if Ap and the other serious political parties start doing so, that is not good for anyone. It should be left alone to FrP to try to score cheap political points by suggesting irresponsible and/or reckless policies.