Norwegians At the Gates: American Immigration and Donald Trump

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services fact sheet, in the fiscal year 2016, "the top countries of origin for naturalization were in the following order:  Mexico, India, Philippines, People’s Republic of China, and Cuba." 

If you read the whole page, you can find one mention of Norway--seems to have been a military spouse or two from Norway who married an American and got naturalized. Not necessarily in order to leave Norway. Why, in fact, would any person lucky enough to hold Norwegian citizenship leave the land of fjords and midnight sun, fabulous fish, gorgeous wooden stave churches, rich oil reserves, great health care services, the astonishingly talented Karl Ove Knausgaard, who, the Boston Globe's reviewer comments, "suffers from the kind of honesty that could peel paint," and a single neo-Nazi killer Anders Beivik, who slaughtered 77 people? It does say something about a country when there's just one really known bad guy. Known for killing the folks Trump wants excluded from America.

When Trump asked why America should let in immigrants from "shithole" countries like Haiti, I thought it worthwhile to point out why Norwegians aren't banging down the door. Maybe Knausgaard could afford to live in any American city, but why would he? Why would anyone leave Norway? I wonder how many Americans are trying, as I write, to become naturalized Norwegian citizens?

And Breivik--if he had the freedom to enter an American prison instead of a Norwegian one, would he? In Norway, people send him boxes in which he can place his neatly folded Lacoste sweaters. But If you believe in punishment, an American prison is definitely the place to get one. 

I can't help but remember Richard Nixon's foul racist remarks about numerous ethnic and sexual minorities: but his policies differed. He really didn't put his money where his mouth was. Although he appears to have enjoyed yelping racist remarks in private, in public he opened relations with China, founded the Environmental Protection Agency, put large sums of money into cancer research, peacefully desegregated Sourthen schools, and signed Title IX in 1972, a civil rights law preventing gender bias at colleges and universities receiving Federal aid.

And Trump? With his bigger button? But now he says he's good friends with the North Korean dictator? What about those talks with South Korea? Can a ray of hope gleam somewhere, soon?