The Danish Immigration Service allegedly ordered Denmark’s 98 towns to examine their capacity to accept Ukrainian migrants shortly after Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine. This same organization recently begun depriving Syrian refugees of residency permits in an attempt to push them back to Syria, claiming that areas of Syria are secure.
In a reversal that Denmark is not alone in adopting, the country has defended its open-door policy for Ukrainian migrants by citing the war’s closeness and Ukraine’s status as a “European neighbor.”
“When there is war in Europe and a European neighbor is exposed to what we see in Ukraine, there is not the slightest doubt in my mind: We must help as best we can … by welcoming Ukrainians on Danish soil,” said Mattias Tesfaye, the Danish minister for foreign affairs and integration, soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.
The Danish government is drafting legislation that will suspend asylum rules for Ukrainians, Rasmus Stoklund, the foreign affairs spokesperson for Denmark’s ruling Social Democratic Party, said.
“They won’t be part of the asylum system,” Stocklund said. Instead the proposed law will make it easier for Ukrainians to receive residency permits “so they can quickly start in school, on an education or in a job,” according to a statement by the Danish immigration and integration ministry.
While the Danish response to Ukrainian refugees is commendable, invoking European solidarity does not justify the inequitable treatment of Syrian refugees, some of whom have been stripped of their basic rights and forced to remain in deportation centers, where they are left in agonizing limbo with the choice of living deprived of the right to work and receive an education, or returning to Assad’s Syria.
While the Danish government cannot deport Syrians since it does not have diplomatic relations with Syria, it wants to persuade them to leave by making Denmark as uncomfortable as possible to live in and subsidizing their travel fees to return.
In 2019, the government began to exert control over where immigrants resided by imposing social and ethnic changes in 15 low-income housing complexes around the country. Authorities referred to them as “hard ghettos,” and Danish rules define them in part based on the ethnicities of people.
As Syrians faced perilous travels to reach the safety of Europe, the government enacted the so-called jewelry law in 2016, authorizing the government to seize certain assets from asylum seekers in order to contribute to the country’s welfare state.
According to Stoklund, the ruling Social Democratic Party’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, the jewelry rule will not apply to Ukrainians since they will not be part of the refugee system if the proposed legislation is adopted.
There is no such thing as a “bad” refugee, and Denmark’s unfair treatment of mostly Black and brown non-Christian and non-European asylum seekers risks propagating this notion. Denmark should seize this opportunity to relax some of its most stringent asylum regulations, provide temporary protection for all Syrian refugees, and broaden its acceptance of Ukrainian refugees to include others as well. Anything less results in a two-tiered system that discriminates against refugees for no discernible reason.
The reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates that countries such as Denmark can accept refugees with compassion. The color of a refugee’s skin or religion should have no influence on their reaction.
