Norway will only accept 100 quota refugees in 2026, the government proposes in its national budget. Should we instead help the refugees "where they are"? No, the government is halving the budget for refugees and host communities. 

Last year, the government halved the number of quota refugees to Norway from 1,000 to 500. This time, they are really taking action and reducing this modest number to a fifth. 100 quota refugees is all Norway can accept in 2026, according to the government.

One would hope that this was because needs have decreased because the world has become more peaceful, less oppressive, and climate change has been reversed. This is clearly not the case. One has to go back to the end of World War II to find as many state-based conflicts . Democracy is weakening, including in the West. The number of refugees and internally displaced people in the world has almost doubled in the last decade. 

The UN's quota refugee scheme is the only legal way for refugees from countries other than Ukraine to come to Norway. Now this path is in practice closed. If you exclude Ukrainian refugees, of whom Norway has fortunately accepted 100,000, there are about 112 million refugees in the world. Can't one of the world's richest countries afford to provide protection to more than a hundred of these people? 

Several major Norwegian parties want a different solution than letting refugees come here: helping refugees in the surrounding areas. However, the government is choosing to cut this item as well, as they did last year. Then they reduced the funds allocated to refugees and host communities by 600 million. This year they are cutting by one billion. 

So we're not going to help them here. We're not going to help them there either.