According to the European statistics office Eurostat, at present, of the 1 000 refugees in Europe, only five sought asylum in the Scandinavian country.
Foreign Minister Inger Stojberg of the Venstre party rates this as a success, reports the regional German daily Nordschleswig , citing the Danish media.
“The figures speak for themselves, namely that the government has managed to make it far less attractive to move to Denmark. The fact that the number of asylum seekers has shrunk is due to a strict policy against foreigners and joint European initiatives.”
Among other things, the politician mentioned the difficulty of family reunification.
At the height of the asylum crisis in 2015, 21 000 people applied in the Kingdom. Since then, the numbers have been falling. Of the 3 523 applications in 2018, 56 percent were recognized.
The automatic right to asylum from countries like Somalia was revoked in Denmark’s 2015 amendment to its Immigration Act. “If you no longer need our protection and your life and health are no longer at risk in your home country, and specifically in Somalia, you must of course return home and rebuild the country from which you came from,” Stojberg explained at the time.
Since the Danish government’s immigration service began its review of refugee residency permits in early 2017, some 1 000 Somalis have had their Danish residency permit revoked.
The Danish Broadcasting Corporation reported that of those, 516 had been directly granted asylum while another 412 were family members who joined them as through chain migration, also known as “family reunification”.
Last year Stojberg rejected EU efforts to impose migrant quotas, saying “too few contribute” to the workforce. The country’s prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, said that it was “wrong” to force European Union member states to take asylum seekers.
The Danish parliament also passed a resolution declaring that Danes should not become minorities in Danish communities. The government has vowed to demolish 1 000 houses in the Vollsmose migrant ghetto after Prime Minister Rasmussen promised a nationwide crackdown on “parallel societies and the counter-cultures within”.
In December, Denmark focused on foreign criminals and rejected undeportable asylum seekers, with Finance Minister Kristian Jensen saying they would be sent to live on a remote island off the mainland’s coast.