Archive for January 2012
Two steps forward, one step backward in immigration tango
In late December, when I reported that the S-R-SF government wouldput a hold on deporting children, I wrote that while this was wonderful news for the families who find themselves facing the unimaginable scenario of sending their children alone on an outbound plane, the rest of us navigating the minefield of Danish immigration were still waiting for the government’s ballyhooed “new era”to begin.
Since then, we’ve gotten a few steps closer. First, the government ruled that seven-year-old Phatteera could remain in the country while the Justice Ministry processes her case rather than following through on deportation threats. To be clear, it’s indeed a sad state of affairs when we need to celebrate the fact that the government didn’t rip a young girl from her family and send her packing. But in Denmark, this is what qualifies as a positive development in immigration policy.
Then, Morten Bødskov, the justice minister, announced that the government would seek to repeal the previous government’s points system for family reunification (well, one of the points systems, but we’ll get to that later) in which the foreign spouses of Danes are rated based on their education, job experience, and language skills.
This was predictably, soundly attacked by the opposition parties, who must stay up at night with delusional worries that a mass influx of poor, brown and Muslim people will flee their caves with a Koran in one hand and their 13-year-old cousin bride in the other and head to Denmark to milk its welfare system.
The reality, of course, is the vast majority of people looking to come to Denmark under family reunification rules do so because of a personal relationship they’ve developed with a Dane. It’s not for the welfare and it sure ain’t for the weather. So, scrapping a system in which individuals are pre-emptively judged before they can even come to the country is a step in the right direction.
Unfortunately, when it comes to immigration issues in this country, it’s often a case of two steps forward, one step back.
In mid-January, there was a story in Politiken newspaper about Maria, a single mother from Haiti, who is facing being sent back to the same ravaged country in which she was sold into sex and contracted HIV. If she returns to Haiti, she fears she will die due to a lack of medical attention, and then her same sad fate will play out on her nine-year-old son. Denmark has denied her asylum as well as a humanitarian residence permit.
But it’s not just the tear-jerker cases. The nation’s pig-headed approach to immigration also has a significant economic impact. Take the case of Mark Turner, an American whose companies earn 10 million kroner a year. Despite completing the necessary tasks as laid out in that other points system, the one in which immigrants on a temporary permit must amass 100 points through work, language, and volunteer requirements in order to earn a permanent residence permit (opholdstilladelse), he had his application denied. The reason? The 15 points he obtained for the ‘active citizenship’ clause were deemed invalid because the board he served on hadn’t been approved by the Udlændingeservice. He’s now forced to apply for extensions on the temporary permit, paying extensive fees and living in limbo.
Meanwhile, in 2006, a programmer by the name of Sean Treadway was kicked out of the country because, in his words, Denmark ruled that his “contribution to the country through my freelance work is not of significant value” and told him to take a hike. He’s now the Berlin-based lead programmer of online music sharing service SoundCloud, one of Europe’s hottest tech start-ups. How much money did Denmark lose on this guy?
Now, while my case is certainly not as sad as that of Phatteera or Maria, nor my potential financial contribution nearly as high as that of Turner or Treadway, the mess of the immigration rules also hit home for me recently.
My first bid to renew my temporary permit was tripped up by a ridiculous clause in the housing requirement. In order to first obtain a permit and come to Denmark, my wife and I had to document that we had an adequately-sized home and a lease period of at least three years. Now, as I go to renew it 20 months later, the renewal application states that the lease period must be a minimum of three years from the date of the renewal application. Obviously, I am still under my original lease contract and 20 of the 36 months of the lease period have elapsed. But the logical progression of time is not a sufficient excuse in this country. We faced the possibility of my extension being denied before our landlord – herself married to a foreigner and thus a sympathetic soul – agreed to provide us with a new extended contract.
That the fate of my family came down to the kindness of a relative stranger provoked my wife to write a complaint to the Justice Ministry, both about the absurdity of the housing clause and because my caseworker had previously incorrectly told her that the lease period only mattered from the original application period.
“Is this really how you want to treat a well-integrated family doing everything possible to meet all these preposterous requirements that unreasonably interfere in our private affairs?” my wife asked. “I find it deeply unacceptable and I am ashamed of the way my country treats me and my family. Don’t forget that we are two highly-educated people that could just as well choose to live in the US instead. Is it really what Denmark wishes?”
During the VK reign, the answer to the question seemed to be a resounding ‘yes’. Here’s hoping the new government feels differently and continues to make positive changes.
In the meantime, uncertainty reigns. We have begun discussing buying a house, but I’m increasingly unwilling to make such an investment when I feel that any day – for any unforeseen reason – I myself might get the boot.
Government proposes end to “point system”
URL: http://www.cphpost.dk/news/making-cut-immigration-dk/government-proposes-end-%E2%80%98points-system%E2%80%99
Disagreement over strictest family reunification rules set to split opposition
When the government presents a bill to parliament today proposing to scrap the controversial ‘points system’ for family reunification, it could get the support of half the opposition as well.
“The points system doesn’t work optimally. There are things that need to be adjusted, and we want to help those adjustments happen,” the opposition Konservative (K) party’s immigration spokesperson, Mike Legarth, told Politiken newspaper.
Just last summer K helped their former coalition partners, Venstre (V), and Dansk Folkeparti (DF), implement the current points system for family reunification, which requires non-EU spouses of legal Danish residents and citizens to earn the right to stay in Denmark by amassing ‘points’ for higher education, full-time work, Danish language skills, community service, and other criteria.
The criteria are so strict – and the minimum number of points needed to qualify for residency is so difficult to achieve – that a number of highly-educated, top-earning spouses have been unable to make the cut. In September, it was reported that the number of resident permit approvals had fallen by 70 percent due to the points system.
That result has led K, another opposition party, Liberal Alliance (LA), and many business organisations to protest the same strict rules that the left-of-centre parties Radikale (R) and Enhedslisten (EL) have condemned on civil rights grounds.
“At a time when the business community needs competent workers from outside, a person can be hired by a Danish company at a high salary and still not be able to get residency for their spouse if the spouse doesn’t also have a full-time job,” K immigration spokesperson Mike Legarth explained to Politiken.
LA political spokesperson Simon Emil Ammitzbøll said his party was also ready to negotiate with the left-of-centre government on the immigration rules, “if we think it will pull Denmark in a more liberal direction”.
LA does not, however, support the plan to reduce the cash ‘security deposit’ required for non-EU spouses from 100,000 to 50,000 kroner, as the government is proposing. Ammitzbøll told Politiken that foreigners ought to be able to prove they can support themselves without help from the welfare system by putting 100,000 kroner in escrow.
According to V immigration spokesperson Inger Støjberg, if the points system is scrapped – and it appears there is a majority behind that decision now – Denmark “is going back to the situation we had earlier, where people who didn’t contribute to Danish society were coming to Denmark.”
Støjberg added that the proposal to end the points system bore the signature of R, as opposed to the other governing partners, Socialdemokraterne (S) and Socialistisk Folkeparti (SF).
“There’s no doubt that this here is a softer immigration policy. Nor is there any doubt that it’s clearly the Radikale who have prevailed once again in this government,” Støjberg told Politiken.
The justice minister Morten Bødskov (S) told Ritzau that the government intended to “stick to a robust and fair immigration policy” based on the 24-year-rule [the rule that the Danish spouse and the non-EU spouse both must be at least 24-years-old to qualify for residency in Denmark] and tilknyttning, the requirement that the family proves that it has a stronger connection to Denmark than another country.
But the points system, Bødskov said, had turned out to be “bureaucratic” and “an obstacle to normal, well-functioning families being able to live together”.
Besides, the justice minister added, “Danish businesses have also complained about it”.
If the government’s proposal is passed in parliament, the points system for family reunification could expire in mid-February. Another immigration ‘points system’ – in which an immigrant residing in Denmark on a temporary permit must amass 100 points through work, language, and volunteer requirements, in order to earn a permanent residence permit (opholdstilladelse) – would not be affected by today’s proposal. However, the government has indicated that it will take up changes to permanent residence permits later this spring.
Overqualified immigrants outnumber overqualified natives
URL: http://www.cphpost.dk/news/making-cut-immigration-dk/over-qualified-immigrants-outnumber-over-qualified-natives
Experts point to meager language skills, misunderstandings and discrimination as causes
Are you over-qualified for your current job? Your chances of being so are greater if you are an immigrant, according to a recently-released study from the European Commission’s statistical bureau Eurostat.
In Denmark, 24 percent of immigrants are over-qualified for their jobs, whereas just 14 percent of people with traditional Danish backgrounds are.
Immigrants were also three times as likely as native-born Danes to be unemployed, according to the study. Albeit, unemployment rates for both groups were low – just two and six percent, respectively – in 2008, the year statistics for the study were gathered.
The figures come from the 2008 European Labour Force Survey and pertain to native- and foreign-born workers aged 25-54 throughout the 27 EU states.
People were considered ‘over-qualified’ if they had more education or experience than their current jobs required.
Despite the significant gap, immigrants in Denmark still fared better than the EU average, according to the study. Across the 27 EU countries, more than one-third of foreign-born workers were over-qualified versus just one-fifth of the native populations’ workers.
Moreover, Denmark also appeared to be a little ahead of its Nordic neighbours at utilising the skills and knowledge of immigrants, the study showed. Whereas Denmark showed a ten percentage point difference in over-qualified immigrants versus natives, point differences were even higher in Sweden (20 points), Norway (17 points), and Finland (12 points).
Chantal Pohl Nielsen, a senior researcher at AKF, a Danish research institute specialising in public management issues, said Eurostat’s report confirmed her observations.
“That’s certainly the tendency we’ve seen from earlier studies,” Nielsen, an expert in immigration and the Danish labour market, told Politiken newspaper. “More immigrants than Danes work at jobs that they are actually, from a formal standpoint, over-qualified for.”
Nielsen proposed a few possible reasons for the discrepancy. One of them could be that Danish employers fail to understand the significance of immigrants’ foreign educations and experience, and therefore fail to properly evaluate their CVs.
Educations from non-Western countries, where school systems are significantly different than the Danish system, were most likely to be misunderstood and undervalued, she said.
Nielsen emphasised that this meant it was especially important for immigrants in Denmark to get their foreign degrees recognised and translated into Danish terms at Styrelsen for Universiteter og Internationalisering.
She suggested that Danish employers also needed to become more open and flexible to fully exploit the skills and expertise that immigrants bring to Denmark.
Vibeke Jacobsen, who studies immigration issues for the national social research centre, SFI, had another explanation for the employment gap: poor Danish language skills and a limited Danish network.
“You have a harder time getting a job if you can’t speak and write fluent Danish. That’s obvious. On top of that, it’s difficult to find the right job in Denmark, if you don’t have a strong network here,” Jacobsen told Politiken.
She added that discrimination might also play into it.
“Studies have shown that foreigners are discriminated against in the Danish job market. That could be part of the reason. If that’s so, then immigrants could very well be forced to look for jobs that are below their qualifications.
Rejected asylum seekers trapped in the system for 10 years
URL: http://jp.dk/indland/article2656633.ece
68 asylum seekers, including several children, has been in the Danish asylum system for more than 10 years.
Normally, the Immigration Office only publishes the average length of stay (about 500 days), but question from a committee from Enhedslistens Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen has discovered a group, people who have been in the asylum system in a very long time. It is unknown how many of the 68 who came here as children, but 7 are still minors according to the figures.
Several reports have demonstrated that long stay (in the asylum center) can result in psychological trauma and suicide attempts as well as bad economics.
“It’s a human catastrophe that someone is sitting so long in an uncertain situation,” says Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen.
The long stay is caused by the fact that it’s impossible to send the people back while they refuse to leave Denmark voluntarily.
Will not soften the rules
The Immigration Act has an amnesty clause that a rejected asylum seeker can still get a residence permit, if it’s been “futile” to send him / her out in 18 months. But this amnesty rules demands on cooperation, and therefore it is only used once in 2010 and certainly not in 2011, according to preliminary figures.
Both the Alliance and the Radical government partner will lower cooperation requirement.
“It is incomprehensible to me that the clause was not used,” says the radical immigration spokesman Zenia Stampe.
Liberale will not soften the rules down.
“The Radicals are known not to neglect a single opportunity to erode foreign policy, and this is no exception,” says integration spokesperson Inger Støjberg (V).
Justice Minister, Morten Bødskov, stands firm that refused asylum seekers as the 68 to return home:
»Danish Aliens Act is based on the principle that an alien who has been definitively rejected by the independent Refugee Board, must leave.”
He will later this year negotiating with the Alliance and Liberal Alliance to lower the requirement for cooperation when it comes to who should be allowed to live outside the asylum centers.
American millionaire to be deported
URL: http://www.jv.dk/artikel/1258098:Varde–Oksboel–Amerikansk-millionaer-skal-udvises-fra-Danmark
American Martin Lowenheim, 78, should leave Denmark tomorrow.
The former co-director of television series M * A * S * H has wealth an amount equivalent to four million dollars in two bank accounts in the U.S. and a U.S. pension plan.
Martin Lowenheim lives in Oksbøl and is married to Carol Jorgensen, originally American, but became a Danish citizen in 1988.
The reason for the deportation is that the couple had closer links with the U.S. than in Denmark.
According to the Immigration Service, the aging American is deported tomorrow Sunday 8 January, although he is financially independent.
Attorney Erik Astrup has appealed the decision to the Justice Minister Morten Bødskov (S), and Martin Lowenheim will not travel tomorrow as Immigration Service requires.
- As far as I can see, the matter is not dealt with by the Immigration Service. There is a standard letter, says Erik Astrup.
His reason is that that Martin Lowenheim is too ill to take a trip across the Atlantic. The American has a bad pancreas, and he is using a wheelchair.
MP Hans Christian Thoning (V), who himself lives in Oksbøl, has now investigated the matter. He will raise the issue with the government and the doubts that have been taken into account Martin Lowenheims health.
Carol Jorgensen is originally from the U.S. but has lived in Denmark since 1967. She is not sure she can emigrate back to America.
- I don’t want to. I am Danish says Carol Jorgensen.
Minorities misrepresented in Danish media
URL: http://www.b.dk/english/minorities-misrepresented-in-media
Ethnic minorities are generally ignored in ‘Danish’ domestic news stories.
According to a new study, Immigrants from a Media Perspective, ‘new Danes’ represent no more than 5 per cent of sources for Danish news coverage even though they form 10 per cent of the population – and when they are asked to comment it’s usually in connection with criminality, social benefits, or forced marriages. 23 year old Samira Nawa, head of the Danish Youth Council, who was born and raised in Denmark, called it a ‘dangerous trend’.
“Media outlets should be more aware that there’s a lot of people out there reading newspapers or watching TV and if the only reference to non-Danes is as outsiders, in stories concerning criminality, Islam, or violence, then that’s the image that sticks,” she said. ” All immigrants aren’t like that and have views about many other topics than integration and Islam.”
Aydin Soei, head of the ‘Responsible Press’ association, said to Politiken that the media should be better at using minorities as ‘everyday cases’. “One of the main reasons that minorities mistrust the media is because they are often unable to recognise the image that’s portrayed. They could be highly professional people yet as a group they’re generally dismissed as criminals”
DF wants guarantee against non-Danish police officers
URL: http://www.b.dk/politiko/df-kraever-garanti-mod-betjente-uden-dansk-statsborgerskab
Minister of Justice must – according to Danish People’s Party — guarantee that immigrants without Danish citizens should not be allowed to become police officers in Denmark.
DPP integration spokesman, Martin Henriksen, calls Justice Minister Morten Bødskov (S) for a meeting in integration committee where the Minister asked for a guarantee that immigrants without Danish citizenship can not be policemen in Denmark.
This happens even after the Justice Minister quoted in today’s Berlingske that he rejected the radical (B) proposals to relax rules for police academy admission.
Martin Henriksen, Minister of Justice has clearly rejected the Radical proposals. Why is it necessary to have a guarantee?
- Because the Left before the election came with the same proposal, backed Social Democratic proposal up. Danish People’s Party was the only party that marked that we were clearly opposed. After the election, the Social Democrats against, but the Radicals still wished for it. We have previously observed that the Radicals could push the Social Democrats to change course. Therefore we would like to see the minister in the eye and ask him about a warranty.
With all due respect, it does not paranoid to claim a guarantee, when the Minister has already said no to the Radicals?
- Well, if past history was such that the Social Democrats have a tradition of putting the Radicals in place so you could call it a little paranoid. But now it is the Radicals, that puts Social Democracy in place in different contexts. We just want to be sure that the Social Democrats’ change of stand.
Why would it be so terrible if there are police officers without Danish citizenship?
- If you are a Danish police officer, the same unconditional loyalty lie with the Danish people. And we can be more confident that this is so, if the officer is a Danish citizen.There have been suggestions in the discussion that immigrants can not become police officers. But they may just become a Danish citizen.
But it’s not a tremendous distrust of the police to require such a guarantee – implied that the police can not weed out dubious candidates?
- No, I think it is a mark of respect. Danish People’s Party acknowledges that it is such an important work that we must be sure that when they hire someone in the police so that their loyalties lie with the Danish society. And the warranty is in citizenship.
Visa problems for 27 countries
URL: http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/ECE1498405/visa-problems-for-27-countries/
Businessmen and tourists from 27 countries have visa problems
EU President Denmark has made it almost impossible for businessmen and tourists from 27 countries to come to the country.
Qatar, for example, which is the world’s third richest country has seven flights to Copenhagen, but its citizens can no longer get a visa for Denmark in their own country. The same is the case for Bahrain and Libya.
The problem has arisen because Denmark has previously had visa issuance agreements with other Schengen countries in those territories where Denmark itself does not have a diplomatic representation.
But in September last year, the Integration Ministry suspended representation agreements with Finland and Germany, and France followed suit on January 1. The reason being given is that Denmark causes administrative problems for the other countries as Danish immigration authorities have to be involved in both applications and refusals for security and immigration policy reasons.
“We have this type of agreement with more than 30 countries and it works fine using normal procedures. The problem is that the Danish authorities do not want to follow normal procedures,” the French Foreign Ministry Deputy Spokesman Eric Bosc tells Politiken.
A Danish Foreign Ministry spokesman says that Denmark’s interests are at stake.
“The result is that it becomes more difficult to get a visa to Denmark, and that is unfortunate. It affects trade, tourism and families and friends who want to come here,” says Ole Brix Andersen, Head of Department at the Foreign Ministry’s public service department.
Citizens from the 27 countries are not completely prevented from coming to Denmark – but they have to take a trip to another country that still has an agreement with Denmark in order to get a visa.
