Danish gov't doing all it can to keep out foreign spouses

Politics International Politics
#1

Unbelievable gall. I posted on this in an earlier thread (can’t find it at the moment) and was called all sorts of lovely names. Then the Economist came out with an article stating much the same. Here it is again.

I’ve got a Danish acquaintance with a Nigerian husband who went through precisely the rigmarole described below, at a time when they had newborn twins and really would have benefited from being near her family.

[quote=“The Economist”]Mr Fogh Rasmussen waited until this month to postpone the referendum indefinitely. “The situation is so unclear after the Irish vote that a Danish referendum is no longer relevant,” he admitted on August 7th. Yet some blame the cancellation not on the Irish but on revelations through the summer of deep conflicts between Danish immigration practices and the EU’s rules on free movement of labour. Indeed, Marianne Vestager, leader of the opposition Social Liberals, condemned the postponement of the EU referendum as a ruse to deflect attention from the question of whether Danes seeking to bring their foreign spouses to Denmark had been deliberately misled by the authorities.

A mishmash of regulations imposed by Mr Fogh Rasmussen since 2002 has slashed the inflow of non-Danish spouses. Few mixed-marriage couples satisfy the strict thresholds for age, wealth and cultural affinity. So several thousand have set up home in neighbouring Sweden instead, many of them commuting across the Oresund bridge to work in Copenhagen.

Many of these couples, such as Loke Busch and his Chinese wife, Xiaofei, were aghast when it emerged that their two-year exile in Sweden had been unnecessary. EU rules on labour movement mean that Mr Busch needed only to take a Swedish job for a few weeks to secure a Danish residence permit for his wife. Yet, despite some 40 meetings with the Danish immigration authorities, Mr Busch (and thousands like him) were in the dark about this loophole until it was revealed by Berlingske Tidende, a Danish newspaper.

Mr Busch and his wife might win compensation for the inconvenience they have suffered. But unfortunately for them and others, Danish public opinion remains solidly in favour of tight immigration controls.[/quote]

Nice of your gov’t servants to leave you twisting in the wind because the gov’t disapproves of who you married.
I hope these couples get compensation by the bucket load.

#2

I don’t intend to return for the time being. I for one can’t get my wife in, despite the fact that we have a child together.

Local consensus is that the ministry of the interior willfully mislead anyone asking. Too bad one of the ones asking was a journalist.

#3

What’s the rational? This is the type of thing I’d expect from a very insular, or highly racist society. Or one perched on the brink of overshooting it’s carrying capacity and doing all it can to lower overall population. None of those descriptions ought to apply, from the little I know.

#4

All the Danes I know are really great people, but I keep seeing news stories like this, and the Mohammed cartoons, and comments by the royalty there, that reinforce the perception, whether correct or not, that it is in fact a very xenophobic society, with Moslems and dark-skinned people targeted in particular. Is this true, or is it just a stereotype that the media are feeding? I have no idea.

I will say that I’m very sorry to hear about cases like Mr. He’s trouble. There’s simply no excuse for that.

#5

All the Danes I know are really great people, but I keep seeing news stories like this, and the Mohammed cartoons, and comments by the royalty there, that reinforce the perception, whether correct or not, that it is in fact a very xenophobic society, with Moslems and dark-skinned people targeted in particular. Is this true, or is it just a stereotype that the media are feeding? I have no idea.

I will say that I’m very sorry to hear about cases like Mr. He’s trouble. There’s simply no excuse for that.[/quote]
When I traveled in northern Europe, I was shocked at how non-white people were treated at borders. The train car would be full, but no one would be asked anything except the one African-American. I didn’t even think they had border controls anymore between the Netherlands and Germany, but when we crossed into Germany, several border guards stormed on the train very aggressively, hassling the two black passengers. Two Germans behind me were quite critical of the guards behavior, saying so this is what it’s like to be a minority, but no one did anything.

#6

It sounds like a messed up situation. However there are many small countries in Europe including my own (Ireland) which could be headed for this. The main reason is the uncontrolled migration situation that has been overwhelmed by rising numbers of asylum seekers. When you get a homogenous society suddenly changing to all different colour overnight, and when a large proportion of the immigrants are claiming asylum questionably or don’t want to fit into the local culture, it’s a bit hard to make the call, ‘Europeans are racist’. Muslim countries were boycotting and attacking Danes for a few cartoons in the paper, in the meantime they routinely conduct mini-genocides on their minority peoples, have no human rights, threaten countries with extinction etc…so it’s really a long stretch to call Europeans- racist.

Unfortunately it’s people like us with mixed marriages who suffer aswell with the wearing down of tolerance for abuse of the system in Europe.
In Ireland it used to be the case that the spouse of an Irish citizen automatically got residence without residing in the country. It was completely abused by Africans and eastern Europeans. Then it changed to 3 years residence, now it’s 5 years residence and it could get stricter. But at least our spouses are allowed in with us and get a work permit straight away. Ireland has 23,000 Nigerians claiming social benefits (how and why that is allowed I’ve no idea) yet we haven’t reacted negatively yet. We have between 100,000 to 200,000 illegal Chinese immigrants yet there’s hardly a peep about it in the press. Mostly because Chinese are well known to be hard workers I guess.

Of course Germans will focus on ‘black’ colour people more, because it’s simply much more likely they are entering illegally (just not that many African ancestry Germans). When Africans gets refused for asylum they just bounce between different countries and different identities. I don’t think there’ anywhere else like the EU in the world that is so lenient. But the police and immigration officers should be very courteous when they do their checking.

#7

So true… Germany now requires a language certificate from a Goethe Institute in the spouse’s country of origin before issuing a residence permit or marriage visa (there are certain exceptions). Apparently this was done because some Turkish residents and Germans of Turkish origin used to “import” semiliterate brides from rural Turkey who’d not speak a single word of German and who’d have little to no prospect of ever “integrating into German society”.

Unfortunately this also means that expat Germans wanting to return home now have a hard time getting a residence permit for their spouse, even if they’ve already been married for years abroad. One of my friends is convinced this law has been made by “ugly feminazis who want to keep the competition out of the country”. I think we have to thank stupid politicians trying to correct past mistakes (inviting lots of foreign workers and assuming these workers would return to their countries of origin once they were no longer needed, thereby making integrative measures unnecessary) by enacting new stupid and IMHO blatantly unconstitutional rules.