ELECTION PRESSURE

The Danish papers today are full of the word Im, the name of a cute 7-year old girl, who was deported to Thailand on Sunday. Im and her mother are both Thai, and came to Denmark four years ago (i.e. when Im was three) because her mother married a Danish man. Unfortunately, that man died of cancer in May 2012. Thereafter, a series of authorities and courts have decided that the mother and daughter have a greater attachment to Thailand than to Denmark, and so should be sent back there. Which has now happened.

The sight on prime-time television of a cute little girl, who has spent nearly all of her life in Denmark and speaks fluent Danish, crying at the airport on the way to a country she barely knows, and all (and only) because her dad died unexpectedly, has provoked a strong reaction from the average Dane, particularly on social media. Normally politicians are hard-hearted about this sort of thing; but there are local elections next Tuesday, and no political party wants to be seen to be callous in the week leading up to them. In the space of 24 hours, the Justice Minister went from saying that nothing could be done, through the law could be changed but only for future cases, to the law could be changed with retrospective effect, but only if all political parties agreed. This last was a challenge to the right-wing and anti-immigrant Danish People's Party to put down a veto and take the consequences. But the DPP avoided the trap, and signed up.

Everybody said that they were merely closing a loophole in the law, namely hard cases caused by a premature death; Im is only one of 4 or 5 similar cases who will now be rescued and allowed to come back to Denmark. However, in the way of these things, people started to dig; and it turns out that there could be up to 1,000 cases over the past years, where foreigners have been quietly deported the death of the Dane. As I say, politicians are normally hard-hearted; but as I also say, there are elections next week.

Walter Blotscher