As an example, I know of more than one married couple with one Dane and one non-eu citizen that have been forced to live in Sweden instead of in Denmark due to troubles getting residency permits. Not letting a legitimate spouse get at least residency is just crazy.
1. Denmark has a very beneficial social welfare system.
If you break your leg in Denmark visiting, we will pick up the bill through our taxes (there is talks about changing that now)
If you get approved to stay here you gain access to more or less all social welfare.
Some people feel that this is being misused by immigrants. When they normally talk about immigrants they talk about arabs, africans etc. And there is some truth to that.
If you marry someone not from the EU they will gain access to all social welfare.
Because the nineties where ruled by a government that "just took people in" it created a backlash as problems started arising with ghettoes. This among other things lead to a (european style conservative) government backed by Danish Peoples Party a political party critical towards immigrants.
Since they secure the parliamentary power they have been able to get a lot of cases through.
One of them being the 24 year rule which basically is meant to hinder forced marriage between muslims living in Denmark and their spouses living in a country outside of EU.
This has been criticized by both left and right side of the political spectrum and is why some people move to sweden because they are much more lax about these things.
Personally I am a proponent of an open borders closed boxes policy and is voting for the only true liberal (semi american style) party that exist right now (form an ideological point of view) and I am sad to see every time people like Gus get's en trouble because of the splash damage that some of these laws result in.
Good thing is that Denmark is a small country and there is an election year. I am pretty sure that this will be taken up by the newspapers in Denmark and hopefully make it's way into the political debates on television. It's a perfect case for that.
I am also pretty sure Gus will be able to stay. The current government simply don't want to run the risk of angering their political base.
Are you suggesting that the immigration laws were made to catch/discourage a specific group of people?
That is why immigration policy needs to be conservative - even if it means that you reject some people who would make excellent citizens.
You have to get it right the first time.
You can think of no time in Germany's history when they tried something like this?
True. I am from another welfare state dealing with the same problems and discussions (The Netherlands). But it needs to be said that the system was grossly misused by native Dutch as well. Laws have been tightened since the beginning of this century, but some groups continue to be resourceful in exploiting the system.
Also interesting is that the anti-immigrant party is most popular in a low-immigrant, economically weak region (Limburg). It's highly paradoxical that people in regions that rely a lot on social welfare accuse others of bankrupting the state (immigrants, The European Union, and state officials are popular targets).
But then again they are the ones fighting with unemployment and declining population so someone need to get the blame I guess.
On the contrary that is exactly what they get.
They get all those benefits still like everyone else.
What have changed is how hard it is to immigrate.
Sorry if that was unclear
This case about Gus is, sadly not a surprising story. The Danish authorities is with one hand constantly speaking about attracting foreign expertise, while pushing qualified foreigners out of the country, with the other.
Just last year, we attempted to get a 1 week visa for a Ukranian developer who was supposed to visit Denmark and meet with a client. We had to pay for a plane ticket and hotel in order to be able to apply for his visa. 2 days before his scheduled arrival, we got a rejection for his visa on the grounds that he was from a "high-risk" country.
Fingers crossed for Gus.
Sweden is not always the best either, but at least spouses tend to get residency and AFAIK foreign expertise can typically get a work permit. Qualified migrants are such a net economic win, that I just don't see how one could actually be against it.
Every time I think about this, I get so pissed off. I am a textbook case of the Danish emigrant the politicians say they want back to Denmark. I work in technology and I make a lot of money; one reason I haven't worked in Denmark since I was a teenager is that no-one there can afford me. That said, I had seriously considered returning for good when I got kids. But the way the state has been treating returning Danish emigrants with foreign wives in the last decade, I feel the country has cut people like me off entirely. I don't feel welcome and doubt I will ever return.
I am in a relationship with a foreigner (Chinese) in a country that has very strict laws on spousal visa (France). I dread the moment after we get married when we have to go through the whole process of the government checking if this is a real marriage...
1. Fewer forced marriages 2. More muslim women are taking higher education
So it has some benefits although I am not as such a huge fan of that rule.
In the areas you mentioned, I wouldn't be so quick to jump to easy conclusions about cause and effect. How much of the effect is due to Muslim women, many now third generation, having become more assimilated than their male counterparts, and so that's the larger part of the explanation for why they are entering higher education in increasing numbers? Besides, this fits the general emerging pattern in the modern world of male vs female skew in higher education.
I'm sure the 24-year rule had some positive effect. How much isn't clear, and it would have to be weighed against its negative effects, equally hard to measure.
Denmark is a tiny country, home to just five and half million Danes. Danish culture doesn't exist anywhere else. If it disappears, it's gone forever. You have to be more careful with it. What works in one country doesn't work everywhere.
This used to be true. It is no longer true. Now, many of those who move here fight to preserve their distinct culture, and to stay separate and apart. Thirty years ago, immigrant parents forced kids to only speak English even in the home. Newly arrived parents look for ways to have their kids speak their native language and stay within the group for their friends, saying, "I don't want them to be like Americans."
Among the various immigrant communities I'm familiar with, the "melting pot" ethos is history except in rare cases.
[citation needed]
To me it sounds like nativist BS. Anyone who wants to get ahead in the US learns English and learns it well, it's as simple as that.
In any case, I think it's good that people hang on to something. Interacting with various Italian groups in the past, when I was in the US, I'd meet middle aged people who spoke little or no Italian because their Italian parents or grandparents had not taught them. Many of them were sad that they'd never learned the language.
Forcing your kids to be monolingual is a travesty and something they can never get back as adults: only as a child will you really learn to speak several languages well.
I stated that you need to speak English to get ahead in the US. How many people that run large companies or are in the Senate or House of representatives have a poor command of English? Very few, and probably not too different from 100 or 50 years ago.
I recounted an anecdote of people who felt a sense of loss at having been deprived of the opportunity to learn their ancestors' language.
And I asserted that not teaching children a language so that they can 'fit in' is a very tragic thing to do, because you are making a choice for them to deprive them of something they'll never really attain on their own later in life. This is, of course, my own opinion, and needs no citation.
The point of all this is that ranting about "them" not wanting to "fit in", is exactly what leads to kicking people like Gus out.
Like, say, not teaching them English, when you also said "you need to speak English to get ahead in the US".
The emergence of (taxpayer funded) schools where English is not the primary language, supposedly so the kids can at least get an education even though they don't know English, is the sort of thing I'm talking about when I say "it's no longer true":
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/200...
I loved this comment:
I am a Swiss born, now US Citizen; in my Country of birth I had to learn 3 languages (Italian, German, French) plus latin (this was optional) and English; later I learned Spanish and Portuguese.
My wife is Latin American, we live in Florida, at home we speak spanish, english and a little italian.
When we moved to the US my children did not talk a word in english, but we would never accepted them not to learn the mother tongue of this Country.
I belive that is importat the children keep talking the language of their parents, but they need to perfectly manage first the language of the Country they live in.
Spanish is a very important language and I agree, support and encourage theaching it in every school but this as a second language.
In my personal experience learning a new language or improving one you already manage, not only helps you communicate with others, but opens your cultural horizons and help understanding and tolerance among populations.
Is that comment "nativist"?
I think that English ought to be taught in all schools in order to give everyone an opportunity to get ahead.
That said, I can see there being a case to take some kids and teach them in another language for a limited period of time in order to make sure they don't fall so far behind because of their lack of English that they fall off the treadmill. If that happens, they will have both not learned English and will also likely drop out of school, with a corresponding lack of future prospects, increase in crime potential, and so on.
I know someone who lives in Colorado who said there is a town there where only Spanish is spoken. He went into the McDonalds where the menu was in Spanish and they were doing a promotion for the Mexican world cup team. A swiss friend of mine also tried to ask for direction from a police officer in Miami. The officer only spoke Spanish so he had to call English speaking backup to even figure out what my friend wanted.
The US has no official language, so this doesn't bother me but your comment about learning English is simply not true for ever growing parts of the US.
And you know what? It's not really a problem. People who want to do more than live in their little corner of their little town will learn English. Some others won't and their opportunities, as a consequence, will likely be limited.
Personally I think it's great since I view the fact so many Americans never have to learn or even really be exposed to any other language is a big disadvantage.
I guess I'm just not scared of there being people speaking Spanish in the US. Over time, they'll integrate, just like everyone else has in the past.
On the contrary, many among these communities have been here 20 years, working as adults, and have no English at all. Are they getting ahead? They send money "back home" (they still call it home), so they feel they are ahead. But they want nothing to do with the melting pot culture. They subscribe to ethnic TV, shop in ethnic groceries, put kids in ethnic (native language) preschools. I regularly see grade school age children born in the United States who struggle with an English sentence, but speak fluent Russian or Spanish.
> In any case, I think it's good that people hang on to something. Interacting with various Italian groups in the past, when I was in the US, I'd meet middle aged people who spoke little or no Italian because their Italian parents or grandparents had not taught them. Many of them were sad that they'd never learned the language.
Hanging on to something is wonderful. That's the melting pot ethos -- a marvelous blend of the things worth hanging onto. Holidays, cooking, customs, cultural fairy tales -- I was raised with these almost to a fault. I think you see this approach to blending among Scandinavians in Minnesota, for example, and I applaud it.
> Forcing your kids to be monolingual is a travesty and something they can never get back as adults: only as a child will you really learn to speak several languages well.
On several of these points, you cite the opposite concept to an extreme, to more easily shoot that down. Well certainly, raising your kids monolingual would be a travesty -- and that's exactly what I'm decrying as well. If you moved to America then raise your kids to speak only your native tongue at the expense of any English, it's a problem.
I'm thrilled to have been raised among a smattering of languages and cultures. We'd listen to, and be spoken to, in the native languages of our grandparents. As a child, I understood several, improving my grasp of the mechanics of English. I'm also thankful to have lived my teens in Europe and Africa, with my folks putting us in local language schools instead of English language schools.
In short, I am not remotely "nativist". I encourage emigration and immigration alike, and do not believe immigrants "cannot be assimilated". That said, I believe if you move to a place, whether Denmark or America, "to make a better life" for yourself, it bears thinking that there's something about the way that place is that appeals to you more than the place you left, and it might be a good idea to be less hostile to adopting and adapting to a new way of life.
It seems to me the melting pot idea is: come to a country not to forget your roots or forgo your heritage (right of blood), but to make your new country your home (right of soil).
> (they still call it home)
Of course they do, because it is and always will be home, just as Oregon will always be "home" to me in some sense even though I wouldn't wish to live there, and indeed live on the other side of the world. I doubt it's "home" to their US born children in the same way, though.
> I'm thrilled to have been raised among a smattering of languages and cultures.
Is that a Freudian slip? :-) It actually sounds like you were raised amidst a fairly large variety of languages and cultures, rather than a 'smattering'.
As to 'hostility' at adapting, that's a very long and complex discussion, but suffice it to say it takes time and probably several generations for families to adapt completely.
I guess I just have a fairly laissez faire attitude about the whole thing. People who are rigid and don't adapt will have fewer opportunities than those who do. Their children will likely adapt in any case, whether they want it or not. I mean, English is the dominant global language right now, if people want to plug into that, they'll do so, if not, their loss.
The situation is not remotely comparable. Most immigrants to the US were mostly from a Christian (or Jewish/Christian of you prefer) tradition. Only 0.6% of the US population is Muslim (0.3% in 1990). For comparison, The Netherlands has a 6% Muslim population (an much higher is some large cities).
I do not want to make a value-judgement of the Islam, but point out that some strains of Islam are highly incompatible with Dutch culture. For instance, more than half of our population is atheist or agnost, gay marriage existed for ten years, abortion and euthanasia are legal, possession/use of soft-drugs is legal, etc. Blending such different cultures is a very slow and hard process.
Note: I do not have anything against any religion (including Islam), as long as it does not attempt to revert secularization.
Edit: correct misuse of the word 'secularization'.
I do not believe you can ever have a clear and clean cut seperation though, unless you're willing to entertain the idea to withhold any goverment positions from worshippers.
You can never be completely reassured there is no ulterior motive, whether that motive stems from religion, corporations, or something else. But I do think (and see that in national politics) that many religious people are able to separate what they think is morally good from what society thinks what is morally good. Just witnessing other cultures for some time will give rise to the realization that your truth is just one truth.
I am confident that cultures will eventually blend. It's just harder when the are further apart.
What most people in the west haven't realised is that it's Osama bin Ladin that has the theological backing, not the muslims that just wants to go on with their lives.
As for your last comment I hope it's the case, but if it happens it will be despite Islam. A muslim is for example forbidden in the Qu'ran to take any friends among Jews or Christians. Unless it is a feigned friendship for benefit, in which case the Qu'ran condones it.
This leaves anti-immigration politicians with powers not of the scale of the problems they conjure. I think that accurate reporting and holding to account of politicians by the media would make a big difference.