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Denmark adopts EU leadership amid migrant crackdown

Stephen Castle
Saturday 29 June 2002 00:00 BST
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At the age of 42 and after 19 months in the country, Shatha is one of a dying breed in Denmark: a successful asylum seeker.

At the Margretheholm refugee centre 10 minutes from the centre of Copenhagen, Shatha is ready to make a new life in a provincial town and hopes her husband and son will join her.

But this happy end to a story of persecution in Iraq, and an epic journey through Moldova, Ukraine, Poland and Germany, is an increasingly untypical one.

As the Danes prepare to take over the presidency of the European Union, their hardline policies are driving would-be asylum-seekers away – to the satisfaction of the anti-immigrant party which supports the centre-right government.

Since last year's elections Denmark's asylum and immigration laws have become some of the toughest in Europe. Not only do immigrants have to wait seven years rather than three for residence and nine years rather than seven before being eligible for a Danish passport, the government has passed legislation which prevents anyone under the age of 24 from marrying and bringing their spouses into the country.

Since January the number of foreigners claiming asylum in Denmark almost halved with just 308 applying in May, and Margretheholm is one of 16 Red Cross centres which is closing – all its 200 occupants will have to be relocated by 31 August.

According to the centre's director, Merethe Laubjerb, the word has gone out to would-be refugees: avoid Denmark. "Things changed very quickly, people are calling their families and calling each other," she says, "since the rules started to be announced people were aware that it was not comfortable to go to Denmark especially if they want to have their families there."

Not comfortable would certainly describe the conditions in room 220 where one Iraqi, two Kurds and a Palestinian live in a dowdy and cramped room. Belongings are bundled into plastic bags under beds and the room smells of old socks and a half-eaten meal which sits in a pan on a table by the door.

After two years in Denmark including a year here, one 30-year-old Iraqi asylum-seeker, who does not want to be named, has had his application rejected, and has been ordered to leave the country.

"They told me to go back home, I said 'how can I go back? Maybe I will be killed, maybe sent to prison for 10 or 15 years'," he says. He paid $7,000 (£4,600) to people-traffickers for his journey to Denmark but has no idea where he will end up when Margretheholm closes its doors.

Such hard-luck stories cut little ice with the far-right Danish People's Party which helped force through the immigration changes. At his office in the parliament, Rasmus Hjordt, the spokesman argues that refugees should be protected only until they can be returned to their countries in safety.

He adds: "In Copenhagen 68 per cent of all rapes are committed by foreigners. Moslems do not want schools to serve pig meat, or for girls to participate in gymnastics or swimming, and that is a problem for integration. In schools the children are educated about Christianity. They want that to be changed. We don't want to change because of their demands."

Mr Hjordt rejects criticism of Danish immigration policies from neighbouring Sweden, which is now seeing a rise in its applications. "It's hypocritical," he says, "they argue that immigration is a good thing. They should be happy that they are getting more asylum-seekers."

From the government itself the language is not very different. Bertel Haarder, the Immigration minister and architect of the law which prevents those under 24 marrying and importing spouses, says that this protects young Moslem women.

"The vast majority of immigrant marriages are arranged marriages," he says, "if you are 18 years old and everyone says that you have to marry your cousin – and it usually is cousins – in Pakistan, how can you resist? There are several cases like that in my son's class."

The government argues that it has brought an unusually generous system into line with the rest of Europe, and points out that it has stuck to the letter of international agreements.

The Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen says that "the essence of our immigration policy is that immigrants that are willing to work in Denmark and are able to contribute to Danish society are most welcome. We are trying to stop immigrants who are going to take advantage of the very generous welfare system."

And he has an answer to his international critics, after efforts by Tony Blair and the Spanish premier, Jose Maria Aznar, to take a tough line on immigration and asylum at an EU summit in Seville. "After the Seville summit," he says, "it should be obvious to everybody that Denmark belongs to the mainstream in Europe."

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