Denmark approves reasonable immigration bill
Source: usatoday.com
Editor's note: Amnesty International says the changes would “have a devastating impact on vulnerable people.” Well how about the devastating impact on the Danish people who have to foot the bill for all these people? No one is forcing these migrants to go to Denmark. They are free to go somewhere else.
Denmark is applying the same rules to migrants as it does to its own unemployed people! Invaders are not concerned with equality and European customs. Instead they want to be taken care of entirely for years and years while Europeans pay their bills.
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Denmark's Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen, left, and Denmark's Minister of Immigration and Integration Inger Stojberg take part in a meeting at the European Parliament in Brussels on Jan. 25, 2016.(Photo: John Thys, AFP/Getty Images)
Danish lawmakers on Tuesday approved controversial measures to seize cash and valuables from refugees to help pay for their stay in the country.
Denmark says the new laws are needed to stem the flow of refugees. Earlier this month the Scandinavian nation, along with neighboring Sweden, tightened border controls to reduce the flow of migrants and refugees reaching its territory.
Under the new immigration bill, refugees in Denmark will have to hand over cash or assets worth more than 10,000 kroner ($1,450). It excludes items of sentimental value such as wedding rings.
Lawmakers also voted in favor of a plan to make family members wait three years before they can join refugees in Denmark, instead of the current one-year wait.
The measure easily passed, 81-27. One member of Parliament abstained.
Amnesty International said the changes would “have a devastating impact on vulnerable people.”
“It’s simply cruel to force people who are running from conflicts to make an impossible choice: Either bring children and other loved ones on dangerous, even lethal journeys, or leave them behind and face a prolonged separation while family members continue to suffer the horrors of war,” said Gauri van Gulik, the organization’s deputy director for Europe and Central Asia.
Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, of the center-right Venstre party, said the new law is "the most misunderstood bill in Denmark's history." He said the country is simply trying to apply the same rules to refugees and migrants as it does to its own unemployed people.
The Danish government has a right to ask welfare claimants to sell any assets they own worth more than $1,450 before they can receive unemployment benefits.
Denmark said it received 21,000 asylum applications in 2015.
The United Nations refugee agency has criticized the measures, which are also supported by the anti-immigration Danish People's Party.
Kashif Ahmad, leader of the National Party, which targets the immigrant vote, told AFP: “The tone in the public debate about refugees and immigrants has undoubtedly become tougher.”
Separately, a teenage asylum seeker in Sweden was charged with murder Tuesday for stabbing to death a worker at a refugee center in Molndal near Gothenburg, according to Swedish media. The TT news agency said the attacker was 15. His nationality was not disclosed.
The 22-year-old female victim, whose family was originally from Lebanon, was taken to a hospital where she died following Monday’s incident.
Nearly 163,000 people sought asylum in Sweden in 2015, the highest per capita in Europe.
Morgan Johansson, Sweden's migration minister, told USA TODAY on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, last week that his country was concentrating on making sure that "good conditions for integration" existed for the refugees it has already taken in.
He said Sweden was off to a "good start" this year and was building houses and thinking about how to get newcomers educated.
"Europe as a continent can't hide from the world," he said.
New figures released Tuesday by UNICEF, the United Nations' agency for children's rights, survival and development, revealed that 4.3 million Syrians, or almost one-fifth of the country's population, has now fled the country as the conflict there approaches its sixth year. That's equivalent to the populations of London and Manchester being forced to leave the United Kingdom, UNICEF said.
UNICEF appealed for $1.16 billion to help fund the humanitarian response in Syria this year. It estimated that one-third of children under age 5 in Syria have not been immunized, and close to one-third of all schools have been damaged or destroyed.
"Syria remains one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a child. Millions of children have lost family, homes and loved ones. Every day children face unspeakable violence, a lack of food and clean water, education and an increased risk of falling prey to disease, malnutrition and exploitation," UNICEF said.
Source: usatoday.com
