Denmark bill seeks to curb migrants’ rights

Danish legislators on Thursday gave a final nod to drastic reforms curbing the rights of asylum seekers as legal and human rights experts castigated Copenhagen for turning its back on its international commitments.

The new law backed by the country’s right-wing government would delay family reunifications, confiscate migrants’ valuables and make already stringent permanent residency requirements even tougher.

Danish foreign minister Kristian Jensen meanwhile appeared before the UN on Thursday for a review of Denmark’s human rights policies.

In the Human Rights Council’s first review of the country’s rights record since 2011, several countries decried Denmark’s tighter migration rules and voiced alarm over rising xenophobia. In Copenhagen, the Danish Speaker of Parliament presented the bill Thursday in its final form to the Assembly for its second reading.

Just one request was presented and swiftly rejected by legislators, as a majority have already agreed to back the bill in its existing form following thorny negotiations.

“The big legislative work... Has already been done,” said University of Copenhagen political science professor Kasper Moller Hansen said of Thursday’s expeditious procedure.

As a result, Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen’s minority government, supported in Parliament by an anti-immigration far-right party that has for 15 years dictated increasingly restrictive immigration policies, is assured of winning a January 26 parliamentary vote.

Fearing a domino effect across Europe, the UN refugee agency UNHCR has decried the bill, saying it “could fuel fear (and) xenophobia”.

Elsewhere in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to stay the course with her welcome to refugees but faces stormy waters, with some conservatives rebelling and key state elections on the horizon.

With about 3,000 new asylum-seekers still braving the winter cold to cross the border from Austria every day, Germany is headed for a repeat of last year when it took in a record 1.1 million migrants, straining resources and fraying nerves. Ms Merkel has stoically insisted “we can do it”, even as polls show that over half of Germans now have doubts.

The leader long seen as a guarantor of stability in Europe’s biggest economy is now being derided by a growing band of critics as a captain steering the country into chaos.

Anger has flared especially among Ms Merkel’s conservative CSU allies in Bavaria, the Alpine state in Germany’s deep south.