Caroline Baudry, edited by Alexandre Dalifard
modified to
2:58 p.m., November 18, 2022
Denmark’s social democratic government is known for pursuing one of the toughest migration policies in Europe. In Copenhagen, in the capital, some neighborhoods where foreigners live are subject to strict rules. A strategy to fight against the ghettoization of its neighborhoods.
Zero refugees is Denmark’s goal. The social democratic government leads one of the toughest migration policies in Europe. Some neighborhoods where foreigners live are even subject to stricter rules than elsewhere. Officially, it is about fighting against ghettos and promoting integration.
Penalties twice as heavy for foreigners
In Copenhagen, in these neighborhoods also called “parallel societies”, the streets are clean, the houses are modern and the colorful bicycles are neatly parked. Apparently, nothing indicates that we are in a ghetto. But here, more than 50% of the population is of non-Western origin. This is one of the criteria for different laws to apply. This is what Aisha, a specialist in access to residents’ rights, denounces “If someone commits a crime here, he will have a sentence twice as heavy as when a crime or theft is committed elsewhere. You are obliged to put your child in nursery when he is one year old otherwise the state will cut the allowances”, she specifies.
To apply for permanent residence in Denmark, you must have lived there for 8 years, speak Danish well and work full time. Faced with this situation, a Pakistani man married to a Danish woman testifies. “I went back to school, I have children and I work. It’s not easy to do everything, but to apply for permanent residence, you don’t have to receive any allowances and I have to earn more than 22,000 crowns (3,000 euros per months)”, he laments. The rigor of migration is consensus in the political class. Denmark even wants to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. A project that the UN strongly condemns.