IMMIGRATION AND INTEGRATION

Readers of this blog will know that during the past decade, Denmark has moved under a right-of-centre minority government from being a liberal social democracy, tolerant of foreigners, to the E.U. country with possibly the tightest restrictions on immigration. The very right-wing Danish People's Party has brilliantly exploited its pivotal role by giving Parliamentary support to the Government in order to provide a working majority for legislative proposals in exchange for a progressive tightening of the rules on refugees, asyslum seekers and other undesirables, all cloaked in a rhetoric of anti-Muslim, pro-Danish nationalism.

Readers of this blog will also know that I consider this a bad thing. Partly because I myself am an immigrant, and have children who come from two cultures (successfully, in my view), so I consider the whole premise rather offensive. But also because I see it as Canute-like in its futility. Everybody agrees that in 20 years or so (and, in some areas, already now), Denmark will face severe labour shortages, paticularly in "care" services; and the only possible solution to those labour shortages will be to import labour, most likely from poorer, browner and more Muslim countries. Furthermore, while the DPP is actively trying to bolt the stable doors to the outside world, rich and infertile Danish couples are actively undermining the whole stable gene pool by merrily adopting babies from China, Vietnam, Columbia, Africa and elsewhere. These children will grow up completely Danish, but will not look anything like "Danes". So the DPP concept of "Danishness" is simply not one that can be maintained in the future.

(An interesting side note. The one institution that has worked all this out is, perhaps surprisingly, the one that is supposedly the most representative of Danishness, namely the monarchy. The current queen is half Swedish, and she married a Frenchman. Her elder son married a Tasmanian, and her younger son two women in succession, one half English, half Chinese, and the other French-Swiss. All of which means that the next king but one will be - at most - one eighth ethnic Danish. Yet this has not made the monarchy in any way unpopular, the exact opposite in fact.)   

Against that background, yesterday saw some dramatic changes. The first was the sacking (itself unusual) of Birthe Rønn Hornbech as Integration Minister, and her replacement by Søren Pind. Denmark is a signatory to two U.N. conventions that give stateless persons up to the age of 21, who are born and raised in Denmark, the automatic right to Danish citizenship. This covers people without a state, such as Palestinians, but also a handful of others who for various reasons are stateless. It turns out that under Ms Rønn Hornbech's two predecessors, the Ministry refused around 30 applications from Palestinians for Danish citizenship, even though these people had an automatic right to it. Since the conventions are pretty clear (and, if there was any doubt, the U.N. could easily have clarified matters), this was bad enough. The real problem was that after Ms Rønn Hornbech discovered the situation in 2008, the policy continued. Parliament was not told of what had happened until early 2010; and although the affected people have now had their cases taken up again, the inevitable questions about "who knew what, when?", coupled with leaks and counter-leaks from the Ministry, have dominated political debate here for the past couple of months. The Prime Minister demanded a review of the whole saga, which Ms Rønn Hornbech delivered on Sunday. At a stormy meeting to discuss it the following day, she apparently heaped all blame on her two predecessors, and saw no reason to resign. The Prime Minister saw otherwise, and fired her. There will now be a formal independent investigation headed by a judge.

Mr Pind (who will run the Integration Ministry in tandem with his previous job of Aid Minister) comes from the libertarian wing of the dominant coalition Venstre party, and is viewed in many quarters as a bit of a young, ideological hothead. In his first Ministerial statement in his new job, he was true to form. Integration has failed, and should be replaced by "assimilation" he said. Danish culture was being undermined, and this should stop. If you don't want to become Danish, then you should "stay away". All this points to a further tightening of the immigration rules, even though most people, even right of centre voters, think that they are already tough enough.

Yet on the same day that Mr Pind appeared to be signalling an intention to take Danish immigration policy in an ever more rightward direction, the whole basis for that policy was being undermined by the European Court of Justice's judgment in the Belgian case of Ruiz Zambrano. In 1999 Mr Ruiz Zambrano, a Columbian national, came to Belgium and applied for asylum. A year later, his wife and small son came and applied for refugee status. These were both refused and they were ordered to leave the country; however, it was accepted that they should not be sent back to Columbia, owing to the civil war then going on. In particular, Mr Ruiz Zambrano had suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome after his son had been kidnapped for a week. Over the next couple of years, Mr Ruiz Zambrano got a job and the couple tried to have their status regularised, but to no avail. Crucially, they also had two more children, who were given Belgian nationality. When Mr Ruiz Zambrano lost his job, he applied for unemployment benefit, which was refused, on the grounds that as a foreigner, he had not worked enough days to entitle him to it. He was also refused a work permit. Mr Ruiz Zambrano went to court; and it was a reference from this case, that the ECJ had to rule on.  

E.U. citizenship was introduced by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty; everyone who is a national of a Member State is automatically a European citizen. It is for the individual Member State to decide for itself about nationality; but once it has so decided, then the rules about European citizenship apply. In a series of landmark cases, the ECJ has interpreted those rules very broadly, on the basis (repeated in Ruiz Zambrano) that "citizenship of the Union is intended to be the fundamental status of nationals of the Member States". In particular, Member States have to ensure that the rights of E.U. citizens are real rights, not illusionary ones. In the Ruiz Zambrano case, the E.U. citizens are the two children born in Belgium with Belgian nationality. If their parents are denied work and residence permits and/or unemployment benefits, then the result would be that they would not be able to support their children in Belgium and would have to leave the E.U. Since a forced departure from the E.U. would be a fundamental restriction on the children's right of citizenship to reside in the E.U., logic dictates that the parents must be allowed those permits and benefits.

This decision, a strong and clear decision issued by the Grand Chamber, will drive a coach and horses through much of the Danish Government's immigration policy. In particular, the so-called "24-year rule", whereby Danes wishing to marry people from outside the E.U. (read poor countries) cannot do so until the prospective spouse is 24 years old (unless they go and live in another, more welcoming, E.U. country such as Sweden first). Secondly, the newly formulated "points system", by which prospective immigrants are vetted as suitable for coming to the country. In both cases, if a Danish (and therefore E.U.) citizen is involved, such restrictions are illegal under E.U. law. Proof of that fact comes from the DPP's legal spokesman, who is already calling for immigration decisions to be decided in Denmark, who should be "master in its own house". This is, in effect, a call for abandonment of the E.U. Treaties; which - fortunately - ain't on.

All in all, a good start to the week for those opposed to rabid nationalism. Which includes me.

Walter Blotscher