Denmark Parties: Turn Asylum Seekers Back at the Airport

Two opposition parties in Denmark’s parliament have come together to express their opposition to the Government’s policies on accepting refugees from abroad, demanding that rather than greeting them with open arms the Nordic nation sends them back.

Denmark’s government has just revised the number of migrants expected to arrive in the country from 10,000 to 20,000 for this year, a significant amount for a country with a population smaller than London, reports theLocal.dk. The change sparked the counter-proposals from the two parties, who oppose what they see as mismanagement by the nation’s ruling Social Democrat party.

One of the groups involved is the Danish People’s Party, who campaign on a platform to protect Denmark’s traditions, monarchy, and church. The party believes taking away the right to residence is the key to discouraging the influx of people from war zones in Africa and the Middle East. A spokesman said: “I think that with one stroke, this would make Denmark incredibly uninteresting for asylum seekers and therefore believe that the asylum figures would plummet when they can’t receive a residence permit in Denmark”.

The Liberal Alliance, who also support restricting refugees access to Denmark are a new Libertarian party founded in 2007. Although they only have nine members of parliament, they have shown no restraint in calling for change, saying the most efficient use of Danish taxpayer krone is to set up refugee camps closer to their nations of origin: “Figuratively speaking, they should be turned around at the airport, put on a plane and sent to a refugee camp in the area of where they came from”.

The ruling Social Democrat party is reported to have called the proposals “obscene”, while the main Conservative opposition party called them “interesting”.

These comments have come against a background of recent upheaval in Danish law and society, as the small nation comes to grip with it’s recent influx of immigrants from the Middle East. Last month, the country introduced a new kind of residence permit which was time limited to one year, rather the indefinite licence it had been before.

The justice minister said at the time “We therefore need to look at how we can ensure these people can be sent home as soon as conditions improve in the home country”. In response the leader of the left wing ‘Red-Green’ alliance that controls the Danish parliament said “Refugee families will be living in permanent fear of the police car coming and sending them back to Syria”.