"Nothing was really dropped. It was just a couple of the proposals that became a small amount softer," Kristian Larsson said, asked about the changes in the final draft.
The initial package included, in particular, restrictions on the right to family reunion, integration criteria for permanent residence, greater opportunity to return people whose applications for asylum are clearly unfounded as well as temporary basis for the protection of unaccompanied minors and the legal basis to decide not to consider individual applications from asylum seekers who enter Norway directly from a neighboring Nordic country.
"Our objective is to make the immigration policy in Norway as strict as possible," Larsson reiterated his party stance on the matter.
He admitted that Labor Party along with Socialist Left Party were negative about the final proposals while some other parties haven't reacted at all yet. In the next few days, according to Larsson, the parties will start further negotiations on the immigration draft before it may be put forward for a vote in the parliament.
Late last year, all Norwegian parliamentary parties agreed upon the need to toughen the immigration policy following the record number of more than 31,000 asylum seekers that entered Norway in 2015.
