"The imam's road trip led to an outburst of Muslim indignation. Copenhagen was puzzled until the Danish tabloid Extra Bladet got hold of the 43-page report that the imams were handing out. It included three cartoons that had never been published in Jyllands-Posten, nor in any other Danish publication."
Denmark is one of Europe’s smallest countries; it has only 5.5 million inhabitants. Until the beginning of this year it was known mainly for dairy products, butter cookies, Legos, and Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. However, conservative Europeans had been watching Denmark for some time. Since Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s center-right coalition came to power in 2001, Copenhagen has introduced the most sensible immigration policies in Europe.
Today, Denmark is at the center of a controversy over 12 drawings, the infamous Danish cartoons. Syria and Iran have virtually declared war on Denmark, Danish consulates and embassies have been attacked in the Middle East and Africa, and Islamic countries are officially boycotting Danish products.
Those who believe that the whole issue has to do with 12 cartoons are naïve. Denmark is being punished for its alleged Islamophobia. Its crime is not the publication of 12 drawings in Jyllands-Posten, a paper in the rural province of Jutland. Its crime is the staunch refusal of the Danish Vikings to allow Muslim immigrants to impose their laws upon their host country.
In 2001, the various parties of the center-right and so-called “far Right” won the Danish elections. As a consequence, Rasmussen’s free-market Liberals formed a coalition with the Conservatives. The new government did not have the majority in the Folketing, the Danish Parliament, but it received the support of the Dansk Folkeparti, the populist, anti-immigration Danish People’s Party led by the housewife-turned-politician Pia Kjaersgaard.
In return for Kjaersgaard’s support, but also because the two coalition parties believed it was necessary, the government introduced drastic measures to curb the influx of low-skilled immigrants from Third World countries. “There is no danger that Denmark will become a multicultural society, because this is not our goal,” Rasmussen said before the elections.
The new government introduced legislation that made it harder for immigrants to enter Denmark and to acquire Danish nationality. Copenhagen began to repatriate illegal immigrants and encouraged rejected asylum seekers to leave. It implemented stricter rules to determine who should receive residence permits. It slashed social benefit payments to newcomers, allowing them only a box of bare necessities.
As a result, the number of asylum seekers in Denmark dropped from 12,100 in 2000 to 3,222 in 2004. The number of people recognized as refugees decreased from 5,159 in 2000 to 1,607 in 2004. Residence permits for family reunification dropped from 10,021 in 2000 to 4,791 in 2003. The number of people acquiring Danish nationality fell from 18,811 in 2000 to 6,583 in 2003, with Asians down from 7,844 to 1,436 and Africans from 2,371 to 312. People who wanted to become Danes had to pass a language, culture, and history test.
After the February 2005 elections, which the Labour opposition lost, Rasmussen formed his second Liberal-Conservative minority government. Again he could count on the support of Kjaersgaard’s Dansk Folkeparti. “Our immigration policies are widely supported by the people,” Rasmussen said.
The government announced that in 2006 it would curb the flow of immigrants from Third World countries even further. According to Claus Hjort Frederiksen, the minister for employment, immigrants from countries such as Somalia, Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon constitute an untenable burden on Danish welfare. “We are simply forced to adopt a new policy on immigration. The calculations of the welfare committee are terrifying and show how unsuccessful the integration of immigrants has been up to now,” he said. Frederiksen announced that from this year on immigrants will only be allowed into Denmark if they have a job waiting for them. A government committee calculated that if immigration from Third World countries were blocked completely, 75 percent of the cuts needed to sustain the very generous Danish welfare system in the coming decades would not be necessary.
During the past five years the Danish government also took measures to ensure the assimilation of immigrants already present. Confronted with the fact that many young Muslims are forced into marriages and that many of them marry someone from their country of origin, a bill passed prohibiting Danish residents from bringing foreign spouses into the country unless both partners are at least 24 years of age.
Last autumn Rikke Hvilshøj, the minister of immigration and integration, ordered local authorities to report the slightest suspicion of immigrant families forcing their children into reconditioning trips to their countries of origin. (Muslims send their children on such trips in order to prevent them from becoming too Westernized.) The government announced that it will deport families that engage in such practices. “When you come to Denmark to live here, you are expected to do everything in your power to be integrated,” Rasmussen said.
Denmark is restricting the number of immigrants because it wants to be able to absorb those that settle in the country. “The number of foreigners coming to the country makes a difference,” Hvilshøj said recently. “There is an inverse correlation between how many come here and how well we can receive the foreigners that come.” The minister added that immigrants should be prepared to discard certain cultural and political notions from the countries they left behind: “In my view, Denmark should be a country with room for different cultures and religions. Some values, however, are more important than others. We refuse to question democracy, equal rights, and freedom of speech.”
By insisting that immigrants integrate, Hvilshøj, who joined the government as immigration and integration minister in February 2005, has become a hated figure. Radical imams, who do not want Muslim immigrants to accept Danish values, despise her. Last June, there was an attempt to set fire to her home, where she, her husband, and her two little children were sleeping. Her car was torched and flames engulfed the roof of her house, but the minister and her family were able to escape unharmed. Following the incident, Mrs. Hvilshøj and her family were moved to a secret location, while bodyguards were assigned to all cabinet ministers.
Full story: http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_03_13/cover.html
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