Denmark’s immigration minister Inger Støjberg, a proud nationalist, has ordered Somali migrants to go home and work on making their own country great again after the Danish government ruled parts of Somalia are now safe.
“If you no longer need our protection and your life and health are no longer at risk in your home country, and specifically in Somalia, you must of course return home and rebuild the country from which you came from,” Ms Støjberg said.
Since the Immigration Service began its review of refugee residency permits, nearly 1,000 Somalis have had their Danish residency permit revoked, reports the Danish Broadcasting Corporation.
Denmark amended its Immigration Act in 2015 to cancel the automatic right to asylum for applicants from countries like Somalia.
As a result, the Immigration Service announced in autumn 2016 that it would use the new legal basis to review about 1,200 residence permits given to Somalis because of changes to “general conditions” in parts of their country, whereby “there is no longer a basis for asylum, simply because they come from there”.
Unlike neighbouring Germany and Sweden, Denmark has taken a tough line on asylum and integration since the Syrian conflict sparked Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015.
In October, Ms Støjberg rejected EU efforts to impose migrant quotas, saying “too few contribute” to the workforce — Denmark being known as a country with a high cultural value work ethic.
She is hardly a rogue element in the Danish government, with her rejection of the migrant quota being echoed the following month by the country’s prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who said that it was “wrong” to force European Union member states to take asylum seekers.
The country has also introduced a series of integration programmes to stop Muslim migrants forming ghettoes, including telling migrants in high-ethnic neighbourhoods that their children must attend daycare from the age of one to learn Danish values or the parents face losing social security benefits.
In further efforts to foster integration, the government also vowed to demolish 1,000 houses in the Vollsmose migrant ghetto and relocate residents, after Prime Minister Rasmussen promised a nationwide crackdown on “parallel societies and the counter-cultures within.”