A dark day for Denmark - the 20 november 2001

[Winston]

Originally posted by Roland
"A pretty large number of especially Turks and Pakistanis are self employed or employees and thus pay taxes. Those aren't the problem, never have been."

So what are the problem groups ? From my anecdotal experience, eg Iranians are often well-qualified. People from the Philippines work hard. Turks seem to have a weird talent for small shops. Hmm...

I wouldn't want to name and shame any specific ethnic groups. One can't generalize on this basis. There a large differences within every ethnic group on how well they fall in with the rest of society.

For information purposes, the largest ethnic groups in our country (apart from Danes ) are Turks, Pakistanis, Yugoslavs, Iraqis, Iranians, Palestinians, Gambians, Somalis and Vietnamese.

We have some Swedes too, but they're completely out of reach. Can't even walk straight in broad daylight.

[Roland]

"It's so simple it almost hurts."

It's getting closer to our system... but it will still be financed out of the overall budget, I assume ?

[Thue]

I live on the same floor as a second-generation indian - we have been telling him he should pay what he owes to the kitchen box, so that the money won't be lost of he is sent home . (he is about as Danish as you can get, and a really nice guy with a sense of humour)

There have also been various jokes about the 2 norwegians .

[ZoboZeWarrior]

Originally posted by Big Crunch
Well being anti-immigrants would give a swing of 27% to the opposition. Thats why the main parties don't play that card.

There's no problem of racism or xenophobia in USA ?

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Winston
paiktis,

Some immigrants work, especially those that have been here for 20+ years. But a lot of the newcomers don't. They move in their own little circles, make no effort to learn the language and thus wouldn't be able to hold a work even if that was their intention, which in many cases it isn't. Society has no interest in encouraging more of those to come here, I'm sure you'll agree.

Yes, I agree.

But, Winston, if they don't work, how do they sustain themselves? By what means? Crime - illegal activities? Don't tell me unemployment benefits

These 350.000 immigrants that you were talking about, are they the official registered immigrants? Do they have the danish citizenship?

BTW every day and night in Greece there is at least one interception of a boat coming from Turkey loaded with immigrants from as far as Afganistan and Pakistan. (last big one was with 1.200 people) And the mountainous borders of Greece with the other balkan countries have again and again proven death traps to people trying to enter by whatever means they can and many many succeed.

Bulgaria and Turkey «entrepreneurs» have made a small enterprise of smuggling people to Greece anyway possible. And most of our neighboring countries have collapsed or are collapsing financially (Albania, FYROM, Turkey).

How do your immigrants arrive in Denmark?

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Just for Austria and Italy, arent these two, Austria esp with Heiders party, further right, not really centre. Austrian government is probably the most nationalist sine WWII, and Italy's too. Italy especially is making porblems for Croatia now with the (once settled, during Yugoslavia) former Italian minorty that lived on the Croatian side of the Adriatic. They brought the issue up, and gave Zadar (one of our Croatian cities) something like " war hero city" status. That status is (or was) only given to Italian cities. And they gave it to Zadar since it was one of the most heavily bombarded Italian cities during WWII.

It is true that this city was occupied by Italians in WWII, but wouldn't you find that move a bit extravagant, for centre right. It is rather further right on the scale. Not to mention possible immigration laws, and the ideas about kicking the foreign workers out. (That Italian industry doesn';t like at all, so it most likely won't happen, but they have quite nationalistic ministers now with the most corrupt premier in Europe - Berlusconi)

Any Austrian/ Italian opinions?

[Thue]

Originally posted by paiktis22
But, Winston, if they don't work, how do they sustain themselves? By what means? Crime - illegal activities? Don't tell me unemployment benefits

Yes, unemployment benefits.

Btw, I asked some immigrants (local pizza place, the owner is a pretty nice guy ) if they had seen any racism, and they said "yes, in the last two months". I was shamed on behalf of our country .

[faded glory]

Originally posted by ZoboZeWarrior


There's no problem of racism or xenophobia in USA ?

Yes, but not to he extent we vote to stop immigration all together.


The Danish welfare program sounds ****ed up. I feel bad for the people who actually have to pay for such a defective system...

Welfare should only be a safety net to live on. Chicken not Steak, Bus not cars etc etc......

Im interested to know about unemployment in Denmark?

[Bereta_Eder]

ashamed?

Greek Youth is the most xenophobic of Europe! (lattest Europol survey).

Many (I don't recall the percentage, 26%?) answered "yes" to the question: do you want the immigrants to go leave Greece.
The French percentage was just 7% if I recall correctly - and they have far more problems that most of us.

But we are somewhat new to all this immigration business! In the past WE WERE the immigrants. Now we are receiving waves after waves of immigrants ourselves. (and there are special parameters: Greek feelings towards Albanians that make the bulk of the immigration of 1,2 millions).

Luckily there are no serious crime problems or race hate problems (yet?) and there is no political party that is hostile against immigrants.


But I believe that a rationalization of immigration is called for.

[Winston]

Originally posted by paiktis22


How do your immigrants arrive in Denmark?

The vast majority come here by means of the right to family reunification. Basically, if one person is granted asylum or a temporary permit to stay, he has a right to bring his entire family in (parents, siblings, spouse and children).

My estimate would be that well over 75% of the immigrants we've received since the indefinite stop for further immigration in 1973 (!) have been reunifications of families. Nice right to have for the persons involved, but not always aiding to the incentive of finding one's place in a new country... Entire villages from Third World countries have been moved here this way.

Another point of great concern is that an overwhelming number of even third generation immigrants from Moslim countries continue to find their spouse in their home country. A spouse who doesn't speak a word of Danish, doesn't know anything about the society she's going to live in and most likely will be an illiterate.

And so down the line their children will likely start school with little or no knowledge of anything but their native language. One can imagine how tough it'll be for those kids to ever be integrated. When they come of age, they go to their great grandfathers village and find their spouse... Rinse and repeat.

It is the perpetuation of that same pattern generation after generation that are making people realize that our policy of integration has failed to immerse these people into our society.

While there are no easy solutions to this, there will certainly have to be some reform. One would hope for some of the more prominent immigrants who have been succesfully integrated to come forward and start influencing their countrymen, but so far they haven't. As for the reasons, we can only guess.

We are faced with the problem that every time we succesfully integrate five immigrants, another fifty have joined in. The system can't keep up, despite some very handsome budgets.

Edit: Corrected misspelling of illiterate...

[Ramo]

Damn, another setback in establishing freedom of movement.

[Monk]

Unemployment is about 5% when it's defined by World Factbook. It has gone down considerably in the late nineties when the center-left parties ruled, but since Denmark's economy usually follows the German one, the Social Democrats probably can't take credit for it.

And to the foreigners, if you were surprised before, there was one guy running - he would have entered Parlament with only 0,9% more of the general vote - who wanted a law that would exile every Muslim in Denmark, even those with citizenship.

A little anecdote: The Nazi party had a slogan which went something like "vote for a REAL racist"..! Maybe they feel threatened by the democrats regarding xenophobia and felt like manifesting themselves...

[faded glory]

Originally posted by Ramo
Damn, another setback in establishing freedom of movement.

Queit Commie........the only true freedom is the one in place in western nations this day. all else is propaganda

And to the foreigners, if you were surprised before, there was one guy running - he would have entered Parlament with only 0,9% more of the general vote - who wanted a law that would exile every Muslim in Denmark, even those with citizenship.

Probably a Nazi or Far Right/Left candidate??? I dont know.....I just know that any nations which gives immigrants that hefty of a paycheck for doing nothing needs to take a serouis look at what there doing.

One person on here said on danish Welfare you get more than working a minimum wage job! That definetaly needs to be looked at. Its hurts economic growth and most definetaly burdens the successful elements of society.

[Winston]

Monk, why do you insist on painting an image of our country as being racially divided, when you know full well that it isn't?

[Monk]

I don't think I said our country was racially divided. If you take the fanatic right, that is, the genuinely undemocratic bastards, they only recieved 1% of the vote, and our Nazi problem isn't as big as the ones of Germany or Sweden.