Denmark will no longer receive migrants in 2018

The Scandinavian country informed in early October that it will no longer accept new migrants on its soil under the UN quota system for the remainder of 2018. According to Inger Støjberg, Minister of Immigration and Integration, the measure aims to further facilitate the integration of migrants who are already in the country.

“We are still in the situation where we are struggling to integrate the many refugees who arrived in Denmark in the recent years. Although a larger number of refugees have entered the labour market, too many still do not support themselves,” said Støjberg in a statement widely relayed by the press. A member of the Venstre party (centre-right, liberal) under Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Støjberg has led the Danish migration policy since 2015.

In 1989, Denmark made a commitment to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to receive 500 refugees per year. Since then, Copenhagen has hardened its position to control the influx of immigrants. Already in 2016, Støjberg had announced that the country was withdrawing indefinitely from the quota program. Then, in 2017, a new immigration law was passed that allowed his ministry to directly decide the number of refugees from the UN quota system that could be accommodated.

According to figures published on the website of the Danish immigration service, 3,500 asylum seekers were registered in Denmark in 2017, the lowest level in the last ten years. At the end of August 2018, they were more than 2200.

TMP – 05/12/2018