The latest contestant in the grand game of screwing with Europe’s refugees is Denmark.
Under pressure from the migrant crisis rocking Europe, Denmark recently passed a law allowing immigration authorities to confiscate valuables worth $1,450 or more. Under the new law, all refugees have to give up their valuables to Denmark to pay for their stay. The new law also places a three-year moratorium on asylum seekers looking to be reunited with their families.
Taking the last valuables away from people fleeing war and economic instability caused international backlash. Germany, Norway and Sweden have similar, if not harsher, immigration policies concerning asylum seekers.
Denmark’s citizens didn’t even like the law. The Social Democrats who control the Danish parliament experienced a seven-point drop in popularity after they passed this law. So why did the Danish parliament think the law was necessary when the Danish people reacted so poorly to it?
Denmark has a population of roughly 5.6 million people, and they accepted 21,300 asylum seekers in 2015. If the United States took in a similar number of refugees, adjusting for population, we’d have somewhere to the tune of 1.2 million refugees, slightly larger than Montana’s population.
That’s more than just humanitarian aid. They are adding a sizable minority to their population while promising to take care of them.
I will not defend Denmark seizing refugee property, but I also won’t fault the Danish parliament passing the law. What I will say is that the international community needs to do more than talk if they want to stop these sorts of measures.
The easiest way to protect the rights of refugees and asylum seekers is for everybody to step up and address the refugee crisis. Every western nation needs to accept refugees and actively work to improve their station in life.
How do we make supporting refugees less expensive? Help them integrate into your society, find jobs, grant stability to their families, take away the uncertainty of living life under the moniker “refugee” and watch them succeed.
The West, more than anything else, is united in its hatred of human rights abuses. The dominant trend in domestic and foreign policy over the last several decades has been to minimize human suffering as much as possible, to make the world a better place for all its citizens. Denmark has been on the forefront for as long as this has been the political trend.
But why should Denmark play fair? Nobody else is.
David Schneider is a 20-year-old religious studies sophomore from New Orleans, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter at @NolaDavidS.