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Nav figures show an extreme growth in the number of disability benefit recipients (uføretrygdede) among immigrants. The Progress Party’s (FrP) Erlend Wiborg maintains that immigrants profit from not working – and wishes to reduce the benefits.
Recent figures from Nav reveal a dramatic development: The number of disability benefit recipients (uføretrygdede) with an immigrant background has increased by 82 per cent in only ten years. By comparison, the increase among the rest of the population has been 11 per cent.
FrP’s spokesperson on labour and social policy, Erlend Wiborg, maintains that the figures tear away the foundation for the Government’s claim of successful integration.
– It is demonstrably wrong, says Wiborg to Nettavisen.
– Profit from not working
Wiborg points to two causes of the sharp growth: a high volume of immigration, which makes integration difficult, and a level of benefits which he believes undermines the motivation to enter employment.
– They quite simply profit from not working, because the benefits are higher than the wages they would have received, he says.
According to Wiborg, Norwegian welfare benefits are more than twice as high as in the neighbouring countries Denmark and Sweden. He believes this creates a situation in which immigrants, from their first day in Norway, receive so much in passive benefits that the incentives to learn Norwegian and seek employment disappear.
– These persons must in fact enter employment and contribute to society before they gradually are allowed to benefit from our welfare system, he says.
He wishes to reduce the benefits in order to reverse the development, and maintains that this is necessary to break the pattern whereby immigration leads to parallel societies rather than participation.