The welfare state hurts immigrants the hardest
Why are immigrants in the United States succeeding much greater than the immigrants in the welfare state countries? More from Johan Norberg…
SWEDEN HAS no official minimum wage, but trade unions with political power set de facto minimum wages through collective bargaining. That de facto minimum wage for workers in Sweden is equal to about 66 percent of the median wage in the manufacturing sector, compared to 32 percent in the United States. In economic terms, this means that if you are less than 66 percent as productive as the median Swedish manufacturing worker–perhaps because you are unskilled, have no experience or live in a remote area–you will probably not find a job. Any company that would hire you would be forced to pay you more than what you are able to produce. And if you are never successful in gaining employment, you will not gain the skills and experience to raise your abilities and productivity.
Immigrants are the hardest hit. Since the early 1980s, Sweden has received a large number of refugees from the Balkans, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, which has ended the country’s homogeneity. Today, about one-seventh of the working-age population is foreign born, but no where near that proportion is actually employed. Sweden has one of the developed world’s biggest differences between the labor-market participation of natives and immigrants. Many immigrant families are discouraged by the lack of job prospects and end up in welfare dependency.
Unemployment problems in turn result in de facto segregation. Despite little history of racial conflict, the labor market is more segregated than in America, Britain, Germany, France or Denmark–countries with far more troublesome racial histories than Sweden. A report from the free-market Liberal Party ahead of the election 2002 showed that more than 5 percent of all precincts in Sweden had employment levels lower than 60 percent, with much higher crime rates and inferior school results than in other places. Most of these precincts are suburban, so outsiders rarely see them. The number of segregated precincts has continued to grow. In some neighborhoods, children grow up without ever seeing someone who goes to work in the morning. Pockets of unemployment and social exclusion form, especially in areas with many non-European immigrants. When Swedes see that so many immigrants live off the government, their interest in contributing to the system fades.
What is a precint?
Comment by JG — Mon, Jun 19th, 2006 @ 7:22 pm
This is a ticking time bomb leading to conflicts in the future. Finland follows Sweden’s way, as always.
Comment by Timo — Mon, Jun 19th, 2006 @ 8:11 pm
There are differences between different immigrant groups in Sweden. One study comparing Iranians, Chileans and Turks shows that the Iranians and Chileans have a much more integrated residential pattern in Sweden than Turkish immigrants:
http://www.immi.se/imer/thesis/abbasian.htm
However it should be pointed out that segregated residential patterns automatically do not automatically lead to bad economic results for the immigrant group. Consider Chinese immigrants in America and in many other countries.
When I was living in Sweden, my lecturer in economics was Iranian, so was my hairdresser and my (public sector) dentist. My neighbor was a doctor from Iran. I met plenty of other integrated, westernized and liberal Iranians while in Sweden.
Comment by Helsinkian — Mon, Jun 19th, 2006 @ 8:23 pm
I saw somewhere a statistic on suicide rates of immigrants in Sweden that showed Finnish immigrants in Sweden had about double the suicide rate of the ethnic Swedes. Most immigrant groups had lower suicide rates than the ethnic Swedes. Sorry for not finding a link.
Comment by Helsinkian — Mon, Jun 19th, 2006 @ 8:33 pm
Anyway in the study the suicide rate of immigrants was on average slightly higher than of the Swedes born in Sweden but this was mostly because of the Finns. I think it was about ten years old statistic, I don’t know what the current situation is.
Comment by Helsinkian — Mon, Jun 19th, 2006 @ 8:37 pm
Now I got one source:
http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/67EXNYAHP491PELJ.pdf
“Having investigated suicide mortality among the 250,000 immigrant Finns in Sweden (”Finnish Swedes”) 1982-1992, we have found it to be very high for both sexes. The mean overall rate was 48.2/100,000 a year — 2.0 times the Swedish rate and 1.6 times the Finnish. Suicide mortality has, moreover, increased among women. A comparison of naturalized Finns (those who have become Swedish citizens) with those who have remained Finnish citizens does not demonstrate any conclusive relationship between naturalization and suicide for the group as a whole. In most male groups, those who had taken Swedish citizenship had clearly lower rates than those who had not. For most female groups, however, there was a reverse tendency. Futher monitoring of the development of the suicide mortality in the group is needed.”
This research had been done by Ilkka Mäkinen and Danuta Wasserman.
Comment by Helsinkian — Mon, Jun 19th, 2006 @ 8:49 pm
The writer forgets a big difference between the immigrants immigrating to the US and Sweden: The US immigrants moved there to work for a better life. The Swedish immigrants moved there to escape a conflict or some other miserable life condition. Theres a huge difference between the two groups. One has plans to work for a better life while the other immigrates without any other plan except for getting out of a conflict area.
To make matters worse, I don’t think many of the immigrants in nordic countries moved there as their first choice on the list of countries to immigrate.
The writer does have a point in saying that the unions are putting uneducated people into worse position on the job market. However, it isn’t said how uneducated swedes are doing in comparison to uneducated immigrants. The article only compares immigrants to educated people, but forgets the native swedes who are basically uneducated. Are they doing equally bad or worse than the immigrants?
Comment by S.Y — Mon, Jun 19th, 2006 @ 9:49 pm
Again, immigrants vs refugees. Sweden takes almost exclusively refugees. It’s not meaningful to compare the two as if they are the same.
Comment by finnsense — Tue, Jun 20th, 2006 @ 8:20 am
The US immigrants moved there to work for a better life. The Swedish immigrants moved there to escape a conflict or some other miserable life condition.
I’d think that Mexicans move to the US for almost identical reasons (okay, maybe not civil war) as Sweden’s immigrants.
Comment by Phil — Tue, Jun 20th, 2006 @ 8:23 am
I agree with post #7. People move to US for a better life.
It doesn’t matter whether you are professional or not, if you are hardworking person and want to work then US is your country.
Immigration policy is also very important. Children of immigrants obtain US citizenship upon their birth and in my opinion this is very important thing for any immigrant.
But things are different in welfare countries. They specially welcome and accept uneducated immigrants because they need someone to work in cleaning sector, public transport and service area. And finally children of immigrants don’t get citizenship upon their birth. This makes immigrants to feel unwelcomed and limited in their rights.
Comment by Belino — Tue, Jun 20th, 2006 @ 9:19 am
It’s true that many refugees in Sweden are not in the country of their first choice and they come there without a plan. Many of them plan to return to their home country when things get better there.
The Iranian refugees of 1979 Islamic revolution are a totally another matter, however. I got to know many of these so I want to share some of my observations.
For many of these Iranians Sweden was indeed their dream country, the best they could think of. Swedes tend to brag about their country being better than all others but sometimes I feel that’s just talk. The Iranians (I didn’t know every one of them while living there, just the ones I knew) seemed to be genuinely happy about being in Sweden. They were both proud of their Iranian heritage and proud of becoming Swedes and spoke good Swedish. I came there in the 90s, so many of them had been there for more than a decade and had settled down.
Many people have no idea just how Westernized the upper and middle classes of Iran were during the Shah régime. I’m certainly no admirer of that régime (the Shah was, after all, a dictator) and the Iranians didn’t think it had been perfect there before the Revolution. But many of these people had been Westernized before they came to Sweden, they were well-educated and linguistically competent (of course not in Swedish to begin with but in other languages). So they had been top dogs in Iran and many of them felt optimistic about making it in Sweden.
I don’t think it was the welfare state that made them so attracted to Sweden. No, it was the liberal mindset of Swedes. Sweden is truly famous for being one of the most socially liberal countries in the world. Some of the Iranians in Sweden (and especially those who were refugees of the revolution) are probably way more liberal than any other Iranians anywhere else but the point remains that they liked it in Sweden because it was their kind of country.
I had certainly not expected any Iranian I’d meet to have socially liberal attitudes like myself. So I was totally surprised when I learned that others had made similar observations as myself about Iranian immigrants.
Iranians in Sweden seemed to be a little bit like Cubans in America in the sense that if you want to meet anti-Castro people, there they are among the refugees of the Cuban revolution just like you’d meet anti-Khomeini, anti-islamic revolution attitudes among those Iranian immigrants who had fled the revolution.
Since atheists were the first to flee Iran, there would be plenty of Iranian atheists in Sweden. In that country people of such convictions feel at home like nowhere else in the world.
An Iranian in Sweden could be atheist, gay, Christian, whatever. Since there are so many groups that are persecuted in Iran because of who they are, in Sweden they could be themselves and enjoy every fresh breath of freedom in a way that most other refugee groups didn’t seem to be able to. I felt many Iranians were better Swedes than many native-born ones, since many of them were optimistic and appreciated the freedoms that many Westerners take for granted.
Sure, many Iranians refugees of the revolution in Sweden had been Westernized top dogs in a stratified society and in some senses their new country was more like them than their old country (taken in general) had ever been. Since hey had settled down in Sweden they had had no plans whatsoever to return to Iran (unlike many other refugees who were living in this constant should I stay or should I go). They knew that the likelihood was that they had lost their old country for a very long time to people who were committed to destroying every trace of the kind of society these immigrants had stood for while they had lived in the old country. They were pessimistic about Iran but optimistic about Sweden.
To sum up, I felt that many Iranians in Sweden certain things in common with the refugees of the Russian Revolution of 1917. They had pretty much lost their old country forever and knew they’d have to get completely rooted in the new country. Whereas there is this stereotype of many Russian refugees of 1917 of having been so privileged in Russia that they lived in the past and idealized their old way of life (I don’t know since I didn’t live at that time and meet those people then) these Iranians seemed to have a remarkable quality of living in the present. Especially Iranian women seemed to appreciate the opportunities that the new country brought them. Since they had enjoyed some freedoms already in the pre-revolution Iran, the culture shock would’ve been much, much worse if they had stayed in Iran rather than emigrated to Sweden. What I would’ve expected was a strong nostalgia for the pre-1979 Iran (a bit like the one for pre-1917 Russia). Yes, Iranian immigrants would miss no opportunity to tell how much better and freer Iran was before 1979 than after it but they seemed to be aware that it was not perfect. They had come to a totally free country that was more tolerant than the one they had left. Yet they wouldn’t totally demonize the new Iran, many had contacts to Iran, but they were absolutely against the Islamic régime.
Comment by Helsinkian — Tue, Jun 20th, 2006 @ 10:55 am
#10 Belino wrote:
“And finally children of immigrants don’t get citizenship upon their birth. This makes immigrants to feel unwelcomed and limited in their rights.”
This is not exactly true. A child born in Finland can get Finnish citizenship even if her parents are immigrants. This is possible if the child can not get a citizenship of another country.
“Syntymäpaikan perusteella lapsi saa Suomen kansalaisuuden silloin, kun lapsi syntyy Suomessa eikä voi saada minkään vieraan valtion kansalaisuutta.”
http://www.uvi.fi/netcomm/content.asp?path=8,2477,2549
Comment by Auriga — Tue, Jun 20th, 2006 @ 1:59 pm
“In some neighborhoods, children grow up without ever seeing someone who goes to work in the morning.”
This is probably true both in the richest and poorest of the neighborhoods. One solution would be a higher property tax eg. in Westend and no property tax eg. in Suvela. I wonder how the good people of Espoo would take this proposition?
Comment by Auriga — Tue, Jun 20th, 2006 @ 2:18 pm
Auriga: unles the parents came here as refugees and from a country that doesn’t recognize these people as theirs, the Ulokomaalaisvirasto’s assumption is that the kids shall willingly assume foreign citizenship.
Besides, even in the case when a kid cannot claim any other citizenship, UVI shamelessly breaks that article you quote:
There was a recent case at the Ombudsman of Parliament, where UVI not only denied Finnish citizenship to a kid that could not claim any other citizenship, they in fact deported the toddler and his parents. Yet… the Ombudsman saw no reason to press charges against UVI for blatantly breaking the Law.
So, yes, the statement that foreign kids will not be granted citizenship stands, while yours doesn’t, because it’s already an exception case and one that is systematically ignored by the Ulkomaalaisvirsto.
Comment by Martin-Éric — Tue, Jun 20th, 2006 @ 2:49 pm
I am putting this nice link also to this thread as it deals with the question (though maybe too analytically to suit the spirit of Phil’s blog): so, a more “left-wing” reading on the paradise otherwise known as the USA from that well known socialist-trotskyite magazine The Economist - http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3518560
Comment by mjr — Tue, Jun 20th, 2006 @ 3:01 pm
This from this weeks Economist, which is as pro-US as they come.
“Only 3% of students at top colleges [in the US] come from the poorest 25% of the population. Poor children are trapped in dismal schools, while richer parents spend ever more cash on tutoring their offspring.”
Johann Norberg take note. This probably has more to do with why the Nordics have so much better social mobility than the US.
Comment by finnsense — Tue, Jun 20th, 2006 @ 3:16 pm
Martin-Erik,
One instance does not support your case in any meaningful way. Even if we are to believe what you say, which seems highly doubtful, you cannot generalise from one instance. I happen to know one Iraqi who now has Finnish citizenship. Does that prove anything? No. By and large Finnish laws are upheld and if they aren’t they are overturned on appeal.
Comment by finnsense — Tue, Jun 20th, 2006 @ 3:20 pm
#14 Martin-Eric
Thank’s for the note. I guess that you are refering to this case, decision of the Ombudsman of Parliament on 23.1.2006
http://www.oikeusasiamies.fi/Resource.phx/pubman/templates/2.htx?id=195
http://www.eduskunta.fi/triphome/bin/thw/trip/?{base}=ereoapaa&${html}=eoap5000&${ccl}=define+reverse&${freetext}=tunniste=1977/2004&${snhtml}=nosyn
#14 “Besides, even in the case when a kid cannot claim any other citizenship, UVI shamelessly breaks that article you quote:”
“Ulkomaalaisosasto toteaa, että A:n hakemuksen käsittelyn yhteydessä on tapahtunut valitettava virhe. Ulkomaalaisviraston huomiota tullaan
kiinnittämään siihen, että vastaavanlaiset tilanteet vältetään jatkossa.”
The department of foreign affairs (of UVI) states that there has been a regrettable mistake in the handling of the application (for asylym). The UVI will try to avoid these mistakes in the future.
I would be very much ashamed if I would have to give such a statement as a public official.
#14 “There was a recent case at the Ombudsman of Parliament, where UVI not only denied Finnish citizenship to a kid that could not claim any other citizenship, they in fact deported the toddler and his parents.”
“Lopulta pientä lasta ja hänen äitiään ei käännytetty maasta, mutta hänen isänsä ja sisarensa käännytyspäätös pantiin täytäntöön.”
The child and her mother were not deported, the father and the sister of the child were deported to Latvia on July 17. 2004.Latvia has been a member state of the European Union since May 1. 2004.
#14 “systematically ignored by the Ulkomaalaisvirsto.”
Could you elaborate that “systematically” part of your statement, please.
I don’t think I have to change my position in the previous post on this subject. This is law, not mathematics.
Comment by Auriga — Tue, Jun 20th, 2006 @ 5:29 pm
Finnsense: read the damn Hesari if you don’t beleive me. Btw, it wasn’t an isolated incident. Ask any political party’s Immigration Policy workgroup and be amazed; UVI simply ignores the Law on a routine basis, especially on matters of Permanent Status and of Citizenship. That the Eduskunnan oikeusasiamies barely dares making a polite recommendation of not doing it again, instead of downright pressing charges, says something right there too.
Comment by Martin-Éric — Tue, Jun 20th, 2006 @ 5:45 pm
Auriga: so, basically, your whole argument is based on the idea that because they only deported half of the family, then it’s OK and it makes it an isolated incident? Sheesh…
There’s been other examples, reported via this FFT blog, even, that clearly show how the Law doesn’t matter one bit and that it’s only when the Ombudsman makes a very polite request to never do it again (and only in the rare cases when the Ombudsman dares) that UVI retracts.
UVI damn well deserves to feel ashamed for their criminal actions!
If you attended any of the recent events on Migration Policy that have been organized by different political parties at the New Parliament building (Greens and Kokoomus, for instance), you’d feel shame too. The sheer absurdity of UVI’s decisions and the total disrespect for the Law that UVI regularly shows has been abundantly documented. As one lawyer that was present at these events commented, at this point, it’s only a question of months before UVI makes one MAJOR mistake that will bring enough shame to this country to make everyone embarrassed of being a Finn and make every Finn wish the country would just disappear off the map for a bit so that people eventually forget. That’s a VERY strong statement coming from a lawyer, don’t you think?
Comment by Martin-Éric — Tue, Jun 20th, 2006 @ 6:00 pm
Anyhow the original point that was brought is that children born here get citizenship. As the Law article that was show clearly points out, this is patently false: children born of foreign parents only get Finnish citizenship at birth if there’s absolutely no way for them to claim any other citizenship at that time.
The reason for this is simple: Finland’s idea of citizenship is not based on birthplace, it is based on ethnic identity. Anyone who ever had Finnish ancestors can literally get off a plane and claim citizenship, regardless of whether they even speak Finnish or intend on living here at all.
Meanwhile, people who were born here but whose parents hold some foreign citizenship are considered foreigners at birth, even if they never knew any other country. I know several people in that case; they were born in Finland, they don’t even speak the language of whichever country their parents came from, spent their whole childhood here and graduated from Lukio and University here, but had to wait until they reached majority to apply for citizenship on the basis of long residence time.
Comment by Martin-Éric — Tue, Jun 20th, 2006 @ 6:14 pm
“Auriga: so, basically, your whole argument is based on the idea that because they only deported half of the family, then it’s OK and it makes it an isolated incident? Sheesh…”
Could you show me the line on which I wrote it’s OK?
You did not elaborate on your statement of the UVI breaking the law systematically. Could you give us some pointers to some documents about the wrongdoings of the UVI? You know, books, newspaper articles, web pages…
On the case of deportation to another EU country, the only thing sillier I could think would be deportation to the same country in which you are applying for an asylum. Hmmm… maybe I as a Finnish citizen should make an application to the UVI and find out how insane they really are.
Comment by Auriga — Tue, Jun 20th, 2006 @ 6:58 pm