The happily knitting border between Canada and the United States is not unique in the North. Unlike the Arctic Ocean seabed, territorial boundaries on land are long settled and calm among the eight NORC countries.429 Borders between Norway, Sweden, and Finland are among the friendliest in the world and their citizens (like Cascadians) identify more closely with each other than with the rest of Europe. The closest thing to a troubled border, if there is one, zigzags through more than seven hundred miles of forest to disentangle Finland from Russia.
Throughout history the Finns were subjugated, first by Sweden and then by Russia, before capitalizing on the disarray of the Bolshevik Revolution to win peaceful independence from Russia in 1917. Finland has been grappling with how to coexist with her giant and occasionally unruly eastern neighbor ever since. The countries fought twice during World War II, and Finland was forced to cede substantial territories to the Soviet Union. One of these, Finnish Karelia, contains the beautiful port city of Viipuri (now Vyborg) and remains a source of great bitterness to Finns today. From time to time Finnish politicians make noises about seeking its return. Less noticed was the loss of Petsamo (now Pechenga), a small corridor that once connected Finland to the Arctic Ocean. Its loss shuts Finland out of any UNCLOS claim there. It is reasonable to expect that Finnish regret over this region will rise in the coming decades.
But none of this renders the Fenno-Russia border militarized or tense. A regional cross-border economy in roundwood (unmilled lumber) is emerging between the two countries, not unlike the one between Canada and the United States.430 Many Russians now own vacation homes in Finland—to the delight of local merchants and consternation of old-timers—and Finnish tourists pour into Karelia. In fact, the only reason this border even warrants mention is because all the other borders around the Northern Rim are so placid. Compared with other neighboring countries around the world, the NORCs are an extraordinarily peaceful bunch.
They also rank among the most rapidly globalizing, business-friendly countries on Earth. Compiled on the following page are index performance scores for fifteen countries, representing the six largest national economies, the BRICs, and the NORCs.431 These respected indices ingest a wide range of econometric and other data to derive country performance rankings in things like openness to trade, tendency to make war, treatment of citizens, and so on. Rather than dissect the merits or agendas of each index, I simply provide rank-based scores from all of them.432 Each uses a different scoring system, so they are presented as percentiles for easy comparison. A score of 86, for example, means a country ranked higher than 86% of all of the countries in the world that are measured by that particular index. Also shown is a single composite score for each country, averaged across the five numeric indices.
A remarkable story leaps from these numbers. With the exception of Russia, the NORC countries are the most stable, trade-liberal, rapidly globalizing players on the planet. Who knew that Denmark and Canada are even more open to free trade than Japan, Germany, or the United States? Of particular relevance to energy production is that this openness also pervades the oil and gas industry, in contrast to the worldwide trend toward nationalization described in Chapter 3.433 Civil and political freedoms run remarkably high except in Russia. Six are among the most peaceful nations in the world. Viewed collectively, the NORCs appear particularly well-positioned to succeed in our rapidly integrating world.
Aside from cold winters, NORC cities also count among the world’s happiest places to live. According to the London-based Economist Intelligence
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Unit, four of them rank among the world’s top ten most livable cities (with Vancouver in first place), citing low crime, little threat from political instability or terrorism, and excellence in education, health care, infrastructure, and culture.434 Remember Lagos, Dhaka, and Karachi, three megacities of 2025 presented in Chapter 2? They scored in the bottom ten.
Acceptance of Global Immigrants
But it takes more than just natural resources in the ground, ameliorating climate, stable governance, and pleasant cities for a civilization to expand. It also takes people.
Like the rest of the developed world, all eight NORC countries are graying and fertility rates dropping. The Russian Federation also faces a sharp population contraction (projected to fall -17% by 2050, see table on p. 173). However, the other seven are expected to grow anywhere from +1% to +31% by 2050. Much of this growth will come from international immigration.435 Thus, global flows of
The specific rules and quotas of future immigration policies are impossible to divine here. However, an examination of current laws and trends reveals some surprisingly different attitudes toward foreigners among the NORC countries. National policies differ on the number, origin, and skill sets of foreign immigrants admitted. And culturally, some places are more welcoming than others.
The Russian Federation faces the bleakest prospect. Its demographics are in free fall, with sixteen people dying for every ten new babies being born.436 Its total population is now dropping by nearly eigtht hundred thousand people per year. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, some three million ethnic Russians moved from former satellites into the new Russian Federation, but by 2003 that wave of return had largely ended. In an effort to repatriate more, the Putin administration created a national program to recruit twenty million Russian expatriates to “return home” in 2006. However, it now appears impossible to attract more than two and a half million in total, even counting migrants from the Baltic States.437
Russia’s labor pool for construction, agriculture, and other seasonal work thus depends heavily on migrants from Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, and—increasingly—China in the Far East. Many are “irregular migrants” and would be called “undocumented workers” or “illegal aliens” in the United States. Perhaps ten million may be living inside Russia. Up to a million Tajiks—almost half of the entire workforce of Tajikistan—migrate to Russia in search of seasonal work each year.
Russian leaders have long realized they need to raise legal immigration into the country, but policies to do so are unpopular. Before the spring 2008 elections the Putin administration slashed the quota for foreign labor migrants from six million to two, and several years earlier abolished laws allowing multinational firms to easily hire skilled foreign workers. The reason for such moves is purely political, as Russia suffers from widespread xenophobia. Resentment of foreign migrants runs deep, especially in large cities where they tend to concentrate. In 2008 alone, at least 525 migrants suffered hate-crime attacks, with 97 of them killed.438
The United States is similar to the Russian Federation in that its economy also draws heavily from undocumented migrant labor. Throughout history it, too, has suffered from bouts of xenophobia, presently directed at Hispanics. However, by any global measure, the culture of the United States is immigrant-friendly. Its population, fueled greatly by foreign immigration, is growing smartly by over 2.6 million people per year. Each year approximately 1 million new immigrants are admitted as legal permanent residents (LPRs), another 1 million become citizens, and another 1 million are apprehended at the border trying to enter illegally.439 Nearly 4 million more are admitted as temporary residents. The number of undocumented migrants is difficult to know but is probably around 10-12 million people, roughly comparable to the Russian figure.
The first and foremost goal of stated U.S. immigration policy is family reunification. Applicants who already have relatives living in the United States enjoy highest priority for legal permanent residency, and over 65% of all LPRs are admitted for this reason. The other stated U.S. objectives, in decreasing priority, are admitting skilled workers, protecting refugees from political, racial, or religious persecution at home, and ensuring cultural diversity. Competition is fierce, especially in the last category with 6-10 million applicants per year vying for just 50,000 slots.
