The Danish government is said to have agreed on legislation to suspend asylum rules for Ukrainian refugees while also asking many Syrians to return to their country.
Denmark is expected to pass the new legislation for Ukrainian refugees on Wednesday after the government and the National Association of Municipalities reached an agreement on the matter.
Under the agreement, Ukrainians entering Denmark will be granted a residence permit within four days of their arrival and will be assigned a municipality where they will be settled, broadcaster TV Syd reports.
Denmark’s Minister for Immigration and Integration Mattias Tesfaye commented on the policy saying, “Many of us will find that when we drop off our daughter down at the crèche, there will be a Ukrainian name in the wardrobe. And that is because we have new citizens in Denmark.”
“It’s going to be very fast. Many Danes will already have a new colleague, a new neighbour or a new school friend in a few weeks’ time,” Tesfaye said and added, “To be perfectly honest, I do not think Danish society has realised how enormous an integration task we have in front of us.”
“You have to go back to the end of the Second World War to see such a huge refugee crisis on the European continent. We are facing a huge task and we will all have to contribute to solving it. Right now, of course, we are all horrified by what is happening in Ukraine, and we have opened Denmark’s doors, and I am absolutely absolutely absolutely committed to that,” he said.
So far, neither Minister Tesfaye nor Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has stated just how many Ukrainian refugees their country will take in but the new policy comes as the country has pushed for Syrians with refugee status to start returning to their home country.
Michala Clante Bendixen, who heads the group of Refugees Welcome Denmark, slammed the government’s new agreement saying, “If people arrive from Afghanistan or Syria, they will be met with suspicion, they will be called migrants until they [gain] refugee [status]. But now we immediately call Ukrainians refugees. What’s the difference?”
“It’s so disappointing and so terrible that people are so limited in their empathy with other human beings in the world,” she said.
The new policy is also a reversal of statements made by Minister Tesfaye in August of last year, in which he stated that his dream was that Denmark would receive no asylum seekers saying, “I believe that the existing European asylum system cannot be defended either morally or politically.”
“The asylum system is being used for migration on a scale that our welfare society cannot absorb, and it challenges cohesion in Denmark. That is why we have to bring asylum immigration under control,” Tesfaye said.