Norwegian Parliament May Vote on Tougher Immigration Rules - Progress Party

Norwegian parliament may vote this spring on proposals to restrict immigration in the country.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The proposals to restrict immigration to Norway may be put to vote in parliament this spring, the communications adviser for the Progress Party, which initiated the changes, told Sputnik on Tuesday.

“The voting will take place this spring, but the exact date is not determined yet,” Kristian Larsson said.

Late last year, Norway’s newly appointed minister of migration and integration, and Progress Party member Sylvi Listhaug presented her 40-point plan on toughening the country’s immigration rules.

Should the proposals be adopted, migrants will not be granted the right to invite family members to live in Norway with them for five years instead of the current three-year period. Underage asylum seekers will have their cases reassessed once they turn 18 years old. A higher bar will be set for refugee language skills and cultural understanding while social benefits for asylum seekers are to be reduced.

To become law, the set of anti-immigration proposals needs to be approved by a majority of lawmakers in parliament.

“A vast majority of the 40 proposals have sufficient support in the parliament,” Larsson said adding that a few of the proposals still need to be debated more before being voted on.

“Some of the proposals are considered too strict by parts of the opposition, but we are confident that if the parliament passes the bill as it stands, Norwegian immigration policy will be much stricter than the immigration policies in Sweden and Finland,” the Progress Party representative concluded.

According to official data, 31,145 people sought asylum in Norway last year. Over 800 of them chose to withdraw their applications and leave the country while 7,825 migrants were subsequently expelled by the Police Immigration Service.