Norway, like Canada a country blessed with considerable wealth and a reputation for tolerance and generosity, is expected to continue struggling in un-Canadian fashion over immigration issues despite the massive show of solidarity after last week's mass murder.
Statistics indicate roughly one in three Norwegians are uneasy about the country's experience with rapid immigration growth. Close to one in four voters (23 per cent) in 2009 made the populist Progress Party, which is deeply critical of the Labour government's immigration policy, the country's second most popular party.
The emotional outpouring this week of solidarity and widespread disgust with the actions of admitted mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who warns of "Muslim colonization" of Norway and Western Europe, can't mask these divisions.
"In the protest against this heinous crime we are united, but of course this unity hides a variety of opinion," said Oslo University College professor Lars Gule, a frequent commentator on multiculturalism issues.
He predicted that public debate will go "back to normal" this autumn when local elections take place.
"People will say of course that 'Breivik was a monster and I have nothing to do with him and his ideas, but there are too many Muslims, we cannot let them ruin our country.' "
In Canada any mainstream politician would be committing career suicide by adopting the position of people like Progress MPs Kent Andersen and Christian Tybring-Gjedde, who in 2010 wrote in a major newspaper a scathing critique of the ruling Labour Party's liberal policies on immigration and multiculturalism.
"What is the goal? To stab our own culture in the back?" they wrote.
Tybring-Gjedde has been particularly provocative, comparing the hijab to Ku Klux Klan outfits and proposing that Muslim students wear stars of David for one day each year as part of a program to discourage anti-Semitism.
So why the tensions in a tolerant, wealthy country where foreign-born residents make up about 10 per cent of the population, or half Canada's?
Canadian attitudes towards immigrants are more positive than those of other western countries, as noted in the annual German Marshall Fund poll released in February.
But the Canada-Norway analysis suggests that the different attitudes in Canada and Norway are driven less by political culture and more by hard policy choices by Canadian governments.
Vebjorn Aalandslid, a Statistics Norway analyst who has been seconded to work at the European Union's Eurostat agency in Luxembourg, lived in Canada for six months in 2008 while working out of Statistics Canada offices studying the two countries.
The study was commissioned because Canada is viewed by Norway and other European countries as a "model" in terms of its ability to integrate newcomers, he said.
The report, looking at statistics up to 2006, found numerous sharp differences in approach:
- Economic migrants to Canada, who are selected for their skills and ability to adapt to the Canadian economy, "massively outnumber" refugees by a five-to-one ratio. In Norway, for every economic migrant there were 1.5 refugees arriving in the country claiming they were fleeing persecution.
- The Canadian immigration system, which assesses points to applicants based on such assets as education and language, ensures greater adaptability. More than half of migrants to Canada from Africa and Asia have some form of post-secondary education, whereas less than one-quarter of Africans and Asians arriving in Norway have higher education.
- Canada also benefits because both economic migrants and refugees arrive with some knowledge of English or French. In Norway, it is presumed that very few, if any, migrants arrive as Norwegian-speakers.
"It's clear Canada has better results than the U.S. or almost any European Union country," Aalandslid said.
"The difference is that historically in Norway we have had a different model. We have attracted more and more family migrants and refugees, whereas in Canada it has been more and more labour migrants, which could influence the public perception of migrants."
But he said differences are narrowing as Norway moves closer to the Canadian model by trying to recruit more economic migrants while limiting refugees.
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