# Norwegian immigrants? just say Nei! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 13, 2018, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509 "2018-01-13T03:26:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/1 "2018-01-13T03:26:24Z")
Nei, takk! Tusen takk, nei! Listen, Donald, I know Norwegians are white and all, but if you let “those people” into the country it will destroy our way of life. Do you know what will happen? LUTEFISK TRUCKS ON EVERY CORNER. That’s what. For the love of Christ, Donald, do not subject us to this. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/2 "2018-01-13T03:32:20Z")
You say that now, but you’ll change your tune when there’s no one left who’s willing to put in the long hours necessary to produce Powdermilk Biscuits. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/3 "2018-01-13T03:33:18Z")
Norway is a prosperous, free country, and the average Norwegian is doing at LEAST as well as the average white American. Sven and Henrik don’t want or need to come to America. It’s always been people from shitholes who want to come here. Yes, in my grandfather’s day, Ireland probably qualified as a shithole. And he certainly wasn’t one of Ireland’s “best.” Ireland’s best didn’t need to emigrate. People like my grandfather, a farm boy with the equivalent of an 8 th grade education did. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/4 "2018-01-13T03:33:34Z")
Hey now! I not only enjoy lutefisk but I’ve eaten college cafeteria lutefisk! (St Olaf College nonetheless) And I’m a freaking Siberian for Lord’s sake! Trucks on every corner sounds great to me! As long as there is a truck with some good enchiladas on the same corner. Man does not live by the piece of cod alone 😃 ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/5 "2018-01-13T03:57:24Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > Nei, takk! Tusen takk, nei! \ Your Klingon is passable, but there is no honor in using such epithets. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/6 "2018-01-13T04:11:13Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Norway is a prosperous, free country, and the average Norwegian is doing at LEAST as well as the average white American. Sven and Henrik don’t want or need to come to America. > > It’s always been people from shitholes who want to come here. Yes, in my grandfather’s day, Ireland probably qualified as a shithole. And he certainly wasn’t one of Ireland’s “best.” Ireland’s best didn’t need to emigrate. People like my grandfather, a farm boy with the equivalent of an 8 th grade education did. The wave of Irish immigration came during the potato famine, when a quarter of Ireland either emigrated or died. “Ireland’s best” were called “the English”, and they owned all the land and exported all the food to England, leaving the Irish to literally starve to death. My paternal grandmother’s family came to America then. After four years of the famine, (1844-49) a quarter of Ireland’s population (2 million) had either left or died. You’d have to go to Pol Pot’s Cambodia, to find a better example of a shithole. The main, the only cause of the potato famine was the greed and callous disregard of the English. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/7 "2018-01-13T04:21:37Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Norway is a prosperous, free country, and the average Norwegian is doing at LEAST as well as the average white American. Sven and Henrik don’t want or need to come to America. How can this be? Norway is a social democracy, and indeed can fairly be called a “welfare state”. Wouldn’t Sven and Hendrik _ **want** _ to get away from that socialist shithole? 😃 Well, maybe not … What is it, though, that makes the Scandinavians so different? Since the Democrats can’t tell you and the Republicans wouldn’t want you to know, let me offer you a quick introduction. What Scandinavians call the Nordic model is a smart and simple system that starts with a deep commitment to equality and democracy. That’s two concepts combined in a single goal because, as far as they’re concerned, you can’t have one without the other. Right there, they part company with capitalist America, now the most unequal of all the developed nations, and consequently a democracy no more. Political scientists say it has become an oligarchy, run at the expense of its citizenry by and for the superrich. Perhaps you’ve noticed that. [https://www.thenation.com/article/after-i-lived-in-norway-america-felt-backward-heres-why/](https://www.thenation.com/article/after-i-lived-in-norway-america-felt-backward-heres-why/) ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/8 "2018-01-13T04:50:50Z")
Actually: > [@](#): > > From 1870 to 1910 a quarter of Norway’s working-age population emigrated, mostly to the United States. You read that right — one-fourth of its workers left the country. > > Back then Norway was quite poor. Wages were less than a third of what they were in the United States. And the wave of emigration out of the country quickly benefited those who remained. That’s because it reduced the supply of workers in Norway, so those left behind could demand higher wages. And this helped narrow Norway’s wage gap with the U.S. by 25 percent over that same 40-year period, putting Norway on the path toward its status today as one of world’s most prosperous nations… > > Then in 2008 a wealth of new data became available about Norway that added yet another twist to the picture: It turns out that the immigrants that Norway sent to the U.S. during that great migration wave of the 1870s were its poorest and least educated citizens. > **[Trump Wishes We Had More Immigrants From Norway. Turns Out We Once Did](https://www.iowapublicradio.org/2018-01-12/trump-wishes-we-had-more-immigrants-from-norway-turns-out-we-once-did)** > > Back in the 19th century, Norwegians began coming to the United States in droves. And they were among the poorest of the poor. It’s hard to understand why this would be true: wouldn’t traveling across the Atlantic be very expensive (in relative terms) back then? If you both poor and are living paycheck to paycheck (and the paychecks not all that regular)–or are a farmer mostly living on a subsistence level how could you save up the money for the trip? ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/9 "2018-01-13T04:59:26Z")
On my mother’s side, my ancestors came to America from an island shithole called England. They piled on a small boat called Mayflower and came to America to steal jobs from the natives. Or something. My father’s family escaped from an oppressive shithole called Germany and became a burden on society by becoming wagon makers, teachers and produce vendors, going from zero to wealth in 40 years. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/10 "2018-01-13T05:03:50Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > Actually: > > [Trump Wishes We Had More Immigrants From Norway. Turns Out We Once Did | Iowa Public Radio](http://iowapublicradio.org/post/trump-wishes-we-had-more-immigrants-norway-turns-out-we-once-did#stream/0) > > It’s hard to understand why this would be true: wouldn’t traveling across the Atlantic be very expensive (in relative terms) back then? If you both poor and are living paycheck to paycheck (and the paychecks not all that regular)–or are a farmer mostly living on a subsistence level how could you save up the money for the trip? The way my ancestors did it (from Pinsk) was that one person went, and then sent money for the rest. The immigrants also went in steerage - not exactly deluxe accommodations, and probably more profitable for the steamship company than cargo. But why is it surprising that those doing well in Norway would want to stay and not go to a land where they did not know the language. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/11 "2018-01-13T05:19:31Z")
I wouldn’t blame other countries if they didn’t want to accept immigrants from a shithole like the United States. We can have cars and houses and cell phones and technology and have so much food we throw half of it away but while Donald Trump is president we are a shithole. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/12 "2018-01-13T05:24:31Z")
Perhaps Trump is prioritizing his immigration choices on the basis of which country has the most pussies he wants to grab? ---
**Author:** ![SeniorCitizen007](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8baadc/32.png) [@SeniorCitizen007](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeniorCitizen007)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/13 "2018-01-13T06:00:22Z")
The shape of Africa can be seen as someone sittng on a toilet … what does Scandinavia look like? ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/14 "2018-01-13T11:29:19Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I wouldn’t blame other countries if they didn’t want to accept immigrants from a shithole like the United States. We can have cars and houses and cell phones and technology and have so much food we throw half of it away but while Donald Trump is president we are a shithole. That already happens. It is getting harder and harder for US expats to find a country that will accept them. Americans are seen as health-care refugees, wanting to cash in on somebody else’s universal health car systems. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/15 "2018-01-13T12:10:42Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > Nei, takk! Tusen takk, nei! > > Listen, Donald, I know Norwegians are white and all, but if you let “those people” into the country it will destroy our way of life. Do you know what will happen? > > LUTEFISK TRUCKS ON EVERY CORNER. > That’s what. > > For the love of Christ, Donald, do not subject us to this. Nobody tell this guy about Minnesota. Lutefisk and Lutherans as far as the eye can see! ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/16 "2018-01-13T12:37:34Z")
> [@SeniorCitizen007](#): > > The shape of Africa can be seen as someone sittng on a toilet … what does Scandinavia look like? An oddly-shaped, strangely rigid mess of hair sitting on Europe’s forehead. ---
**Author:** ![Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b2d939/32.png) [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Go_Arachnid_Laser_1)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/17 "2018-01-13T12:44:07Z")
I think this is the right place for [this reddit comment](https://np.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/7pv08v/a_new_low_the_world_is_furious_at_trump_for_his/dsk8sbi/) that’s become really popular: > [@](#): > > The most offensive part about Trump’s comments today wasn’t the word “shithole”. It was the word “Why”. > > “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” > > Do people even really understand what our president is saying? > > Look, I’m not angry because he calls places “shitholes”. I’m a first generation immigrant. I come from a shithole. I lived 10 years in a shithole. I’ll freely call it a shithole. I won’t get offended if you call it a shithole! It’s a shithole! Happy? > > But how DARE he use my origin as an excuse to demand an additional reason to explain my presence here? Why is it up to me (but not say, a white Norwegian) to provide some extra level of justification for why I deserve the chance to be an American? > > If these places really are shitholes, shouldn’t there be an even greater obligation to help people who come from there, specifically because they’re in the most danger? > > Apparently not. Because Trump sincerely believes that some people do, and some people do not deserve the chance to be Americans, and your birthplace (and by extension, your race) is a key deciding factor in whether you deserve the chance to be an American. And it just so happens that the “right” places happen to be white. > > Notice that he did not ask “Why are we letting in poor people?” or “Why are we letting in people without degrees?” or “Why are we letting in people with criminal histories” or “Why are we letting in people who refuse to learn English?”. > > No, let’s cut the crap, already, because deep down, we know damn well that he’s not talking about merit, or even about your place of origin. After everything you’ve seen, who do you think Trump is more likely to feel is more deserving citizenship? One of those scary Muslims that are “taking over” Norway, or a white South African? Cuz I got a feeling that when he gets a look at those people, the calculus for determining whether their home countries count as “shitholes” suddenly changes. > > Trump is practically saying “America is for white people. The rest are interlopers until proven otherwise. Until someone explains to me WHY they’re even allowed here.” Let’s not forget either, that in this particular situation, he’s not even talking about illegal immigrants. He doesn’t get to even use that old fig-leaf. > > He’s talking about a reconfiguration of who we even allow the chance to become legal, through all the proper channels, not based on merit, not based on national security, not based on employability, but specifically targeted against the people he happens to hate. > > And yet, the media is taking the bait. Already they rush to obfuscate the issue, to absolve him of the real evil of his comment by focusing on the “inappropriate word” he used. > > Already, we’re having these dumb conversations like “Well, he denied that he said that exact word, but he said she said that he did!” or “Well, to be fair, Haiti isn’t exactly a nice place to live, he’s just saying what everyone thinks privately, and he just chose a colorful word to describe it…”, and instead of focusing on the racism, we just go “Oh, but look at the pretty beaches of Haiti! It’s not a shithole! Look at the natural beauty and rich culture of-” SHUT THE FUCK UP! > > What bearing does that debate have on anything?!? As if Trump’s greatest sin is his vocabulary and not watching the Travel Channel? > > What our president said today isn’t just boorish, it isn’t just cruel. It betrays a deep and insidious level of racism that can only be described as white supremacy. Again. This is a pattern, don’t forget. But in this instance, he is literally throwing a tantrum because the “wrong people” are enjoying the benefit of immigration. > > And it is so depressing and so terrifying, that even Trump’s opponents - the people who represent the best hope we got to survive this regime - are just gonna waltz past that and chide him for his language. > > If I’m the one from the shithole, how come Americans are so stupid that they keep falling for this crap over and over? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/18 "2018-01-13T13:19:56Z")
Do these people in those shitholes expect us to hold up a lamp to some kind of golden door to America just so they can send us a bunch of huddled, homeless masses? What the hell are we supposed to do with all that human refuse? ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/19 "2018-01-13T13:39:16Z")
Norway? _Norway_? Actually, I’m kinda surprised Trump picked [Norway](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ef/6f/84/ef6f8402a9342768904c24a24c851bed.jpg). ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509/20 "2018-01-13T14:42:26Z")
You know, for someone whose mother was an immigrant, Trump sure has a bug up his ass about this topic. Of course, she was from one of the [del]white[/del] good countries, so maybe that’s OK. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norwegian-immigrants-just-say-nei/806509.md?page=2)