Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.12.2006, Blaðsíða 16

REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE18_006_FEATURE/CURRENT EVENTS_19
“The issue of immigration as such needs to be
discussed. We need to decide how we prepare
Icelandic society to welcome immigrants. In a
way, the government has opened the debate
by not taking the initiative in this discussion.
But the way the discourse has been presented
lately by the Liberal Party, it is coming from an
entirely different direction.”
-Úlfar Hauksson, Assistant Professor of Politi-
cal Science, University of Iceland
Last month, Liberal Party member and former
reserve-MP Jón Magnússon, brought up the
topic of immigration in Iceland in a column in
the daily newspaper Blaðið, titled ‘Iceland for
Icelanders?’. Despite the obvious reference to
racism in the title, Magnússon has maintained
that the core argument of his column is that
“the system is obviously not prepared to deal
with the growing influx of foreigners.”
Displaying incredible lack of respect for
the rules of logic, Magnússon claimed that
“if the influx of foreigners continues to grow
at the current rate, Icelanders will number
400,000 (currently 300,000) by the year
2015, and immigrants will number 80,000.”
Choosing to completely ignore the difference
between permanent immigrants to the coun-
try and the migrant work force who are tem-
porarily employed and make up the majority
of foreign residents in the country, in order to
pad the weight of his argument, Magnússon
also makes the erroneous assumption that the
need for such a migrant work force will conti-
nue to increase at the same rate for the next
decade.
As faulty as his logic is, there is a good re-
ason to discuss the “system’s” preparedness
to deal with the recent influx of immigrants,
particularly how we assist them in their as-
similation to Iceland. Magnússon however is
calling for a stricter immigration policy and
shuns all attempts to critically discuss an im-
portant issue, revealing his true motives when
he goes on to say, “If I was an out-of-work
Pole, I would not think twice before moving
to Iceland. Nobody should understand my
words so that I have anything against Poles or
other Christians from our part of the world.”
That is, although Magnússon has con-
cerns over immigration, there are certain im-
migrants that are more desirable than others.
He goes on to especially mention his fondness
for people from Denmark, Sweden and Nor-
way (why he simply didn’t use the term “of
Aryan descent” is beyond me), while especi-
ally sorting out the more undesirable ones, “I
don’t want to bring in people from the bro-
therhood of Muhammad who have their own
laws and don’t respect minimum rights and
offend women.”

Circling the Wagons
As easy as it would have been for all con-
cerned – leaders of the Liberal Party included,
to dismiss Magnússon’s diatribe as the ram-
blings of one disgruntled member, the party’s
vice chairman, Magnús Þór Hafsteinsson ap-
peared on the TV talk show Silfur Egils, where
he voiced his support for the views expressed
in Magnússon’s article. Soon enough, other
leading proponents of the party, including the
Chairman Guðjón Arnar Kristjánsson and the
party’s MP Sigurjón Þórðarson, circled the wa-
gons and defended Magnússon and his calls
for stricter immigration policy, lending him
credence as a party spokesman on the issue.
In an attempt to play damage control for
the racial innuendos appearing in Magnús-
son’s column, the Liberal Party has focused
their fight for stricter immigration policies by
trying to focus the discussion on two different
topics.
1) The decision the Icelandic government
made in 2006 regarding the EU’s regulations
of free flow of workforce between member
states (and the EEA countries, such as Iceland)
after the enlargement of the EU in 2004, al-
lowing workers from more disadvantaged
countries such as Poland, Slovakia and the
Baltic states to freely apply for work in Iceland
without applying for a special work permit.
Despite being a member of the EEA, and
therefore obligated to ratify EU regulation,
Iceland could have postponed the decision
for as long as seven years instead of two. The
Liberal Party claims that a gross mistake was
made on behalf of the Icelandic government
by not fully extending the adaptation period
until the year 2011, thus allowing a flood of
foreigners to Iceland who would do one of
two things, be willing to work for lower wa-
ges than Icelanders, thereby undercutting the
wage market and rob Icelanders of their jobs
or they would come here to claim social bene-
fits and undercut our social welfare system.
2) The fear of a cultural clash by poin-
ting to immigration problems in other Nordic
countries.
The Liberal Party stance has particularly
been directed towards the working class,
while breeding ignorance, half-truths, preju-
dice, and the mentality of us vs. them. One
example, and by no means the only one, of
how their discourse has been conducted can
be found in a blog post by Liberal Party MP Si-
gurjón Þórðarson from Nov. 5 where he said,
“The unlimited influx [of foreign workers]
endangers the wages of a large group of the
working class, even if it does little to threaten
the educated experts who often control the
discourse in Iceland.”
The Liberal Party’s position was met with
mixed reactions. While other parties were
quick to condemn the party for their position
and the general public felt insulted by their
blatant use of propaganda, Icelandic media
jumped at the chance to stir the controversy
and misguided Icelandic nationalists soon
found themselves filling out entry forms to
the Party, with a recent poll showing a sub-
stantial increase in its support.

Meeting the Demand
The emergence of a semi-nationalistic anti-
immigration party in Icelandic politics should
perhaps not come as a surprise. As recently as
last spring, former MP Ásgeir Hannes Eiríks-
son commissioned IMG Gallup to conduct a
poll on his behalf, gauging the attitude of Icel-
anders towards a party with an anti-immigra-
tion / nationalistic platform. According to the
poll, one-third of Icelanders said they would
consider voting for such a party. For a political
party on the verge of elimination, that is a lot
of potential votes.
In a conversation with the Grapevine, Úl-
far Hauksson, Assistant Professor of Political
Science at the University of Iceland said, “The
Liberal Party is clearly moving in the direction
of the Danish People’s Party (Folkepartiet).
They are appealing to people’s nationalistic
tendencies and the discourse is similar, war-
nings about how “these people will change
our society.” This is a very typical reaction for
a political party that is on the defensive. The
party has based their campaigns on one is-
sue in the past and it is not enough anymore.
They were likely to be wiped out in the next
election, so they grab this issue to attract vo-
ters when polls show that up to 30 percent of
Icelandic voters would consider supporting a
party with an anti-immigration platform.”
The theory that the Liberal Party is rea-
ching for the immigration issue in order to get
the disgruntled vote is given added weight
by the words of Vice-Party Chairman, Mag-
nús Þór Hafsteinsson, who went on record in
this year’s April 23 edition of the newspaper
daily Fréttablaðið in reply to the question of
whether immigrants were causing problems
in Iceland, “I don’t see any problem here. Fo-
reigners do well here and have brought a lot
of good things to Icelandic society. I see no
need to create a special platform regarding
foreign citizens,” Hafsteinsson said.
Former Grapevine journalist Paul F. Niko-
lov, who launched a political movement called
the New Icelander’s Party to bring political at-
tention to the immigrant community, before
running in the parliamentary primaries for the
Leftist-Green Party in the upcoming election
agrees with Hauksson, saying about the Libe-
ral Party, “They are becoming a carbon copy
of the Danish People’s Party, and there is no
question they are doing it to drum up support.
I agree that the immigrant issue needs to be
discussed, but it is not right to get people wor-
ked up based on rumours. The facts are squa-
rely against them. Unemployment in Iceland
is less than one percent. Instead of discussing
the issue, they only want to talk about how
the party is being flooded with new people.
You cannot blame immigrants for being paid
less than Icelanders any more than you can
blame women for being paid less than men.
It’s not like women are demanding lower wa-
ges.”
Nikolov touches on the subject of wage
differences between Icelanders and immi-
grants. The difference has mainly been ex-
plained by two factors. Immigrants have filled
jobs where Icelanders have failed to meet the
demand in basic service industries and low-
level healthcare for example. Immigrants, or
more accurately, foreign works have also been
frequent victims of infraction to their worker’s
rights and legally binding contracts for mini-
mum wages. The Liberal Party’s tactic of pla-
cing the responsibility of these infractions on
the shoulder of the workers is obviously er-
roneous and misleading, and the party mem-
bers have been curiously reluctant to discuss
unemployment numbers along with the num-
ber of foreign workers in the country.

The Truth About Foreign Work Force
According to numbers from the Icelandic La-
bour Union and the Directorate of Employ-
ment, the employment situation in Iceland is
exceptionally good. Current unemployment
in Iceland is one percent, which means there
is virtually no unemployment, but rather an
excessive demand for work force. According
to statistics from the Directorate of Employ-
ment and the Directorate of Immigration,
the number of foreigners who have sought
residence permits in Iceland this year totals
10,000, bringing the total foreign work force
in Iceland to an expected 15,000. The Icelan-
dic Labour Union maintains that the increase
is due to heavy demand for work force stem-
ming from the build up of heavy industry in
Eastern Iceland.
In an interview with the Grapevine, Guð-
mundur Hilmarsson from the Icelandic Labour
Union said, “The foreign work force has not
been taking any employment away from Icel-
anders. They have been asked to come here
to meet the added demand for work force
in the country. I cannot understand this dis-
cussion by the Liberals. It is totally based on
false presumptions and does nothing but fuel
animosity against foreigners. It is completely
impossible to blame foreign workers for being
offered lower wages. It is against the law to
offer wages under the minimum wage bar-
rier, and if that is being done, then that is a
criminal act by the employer, not the employ-
ee. People who are coming in from Poland
or China have no good way of knowing their
rights or what the minimum wage is, and
even if they are being offered something that
is beyond minimum wage in Iceland, it may
still be a good wage compared to their home
country.”
Úlfar Hauksson agrees, “If you look at dif-
ferent groups of immigrants, you will see that
people come to Iceland for different reasons
than to the other Nordic countries. The ma-
jority of the immigrants in the rest of Scandi-
navia are seeking refuge from poverty or war
and in many cases they go straight to the so-
cial welfare system and do not enter the em-
ployment market until some years later and in
some cases not at all. The people who are co-
ming to Iceland are coming here to work. This
is a migrant work force that has come here
because the economy has been calling for it
and they are likely to leave and look for work
somewhere else when the economy slows
down.”
In a lengthy discussion with the Grape-
vine, Ragnar Árnason, head of labour market
division of the Confederation of Icelandic Em-
ployers said that it would be best to forget
this discussion as soon as possible. He blamed
the Liberal Party for blatantly over-simplifying
the economic factors of the immigrant issue.
“With the current level of construction in this
country, we could never have met the de-
mand for work force with domestic workforce
only. So, obviously, the wage drift in Iceland
would have been much greater if it was not
for the foreigners and companies would have
been forced to enter a bidding war for Icel-
andic workers. The wage drift between years
has been 10-11 percent, which is much more
than in the surrounding countries, that num-
ber would have been substantially higher wit-
hout foreign workers. We would have been
forced to ration developments to diminish the
level of operation, especially with private in-
vestment. People would have had to apply for
permits from authorities to build a roof over
their head.”
With the inflation level in Iceland hovering
above eight percent in recent months, further
increase in wage drift would surely have pu-
shed inflation marks higher. That exact deve-
lopment took place in the late 90’s when de-
mand for workers far exceeded supply and as
a result, inflation soared. Back then there was
no tradition for bringing in foreign workers to
alleviate tension in the labour market.
“Looking ahead, you might even say that
the addition of foreign workers is protecting
Icelandic jobs. It is obvious that if you have a
workplace that needs 100 people to run as
an efficient unit, and you can only supply it
with 70 people, you only have two options,
either you fold the operation or you move the
operation to another country,” Árnason con-
tinues. In either case, that is 70 Icelandic jobs
lost, instead of the 30 created for foreigners,
who do, after all, pay their taxes in Iceland.
Árnason also brings up the subject of fo-
reign temporary contractor agencies. These
agencies, located in countries like Poland or
Lithuania for example, were used extensively
by Icelandic building contractors to supply
workers on salaries far below the Icelandic
minimum wage, only legally, for the workers
were employed by the agency, not the buil-
ding contractor, “One positive thing to come
out of the change that was made March 1 is
that companies are now able to hire employ-
ees directly instead of going through foreign
temporary contractor agencies, which are a lot
more difficult to supervise. Magnús Hafsteins-
son ought to know better. The adaptation pe-
riod that we were offered and decided to use
from 2004-2006 did not extend to the free
flow of service companies, like the temporary
contractor agencies, within the EU. This is so-
mething the Liberal Party conveniently forgets
to mention.”
But perhaps, all this is over-explains a rather
simple issue. The Labour Union’s Guðmundur
Hilmarsson thinks we might be well-served
by looking closer to home. “I think when we
are discussing these issues, we should keep in
mind how Icelanders have in large numbers
sought work in other Nordic countries, such
as Sweden, every time unemployment increa-
ses and the economy has been slow here. We
regard this as basic survival instinct on our be-
half, but when a Pole decides to do the same
then suddenly it is something completely dif-
ferent. They are doing this out of the same
basic survival instinct as we are.”
Faulty Logic, Half-truths and Innuendos
Text by Sveinn Birkir Björnsson Photo by Gulli
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