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International Migration News - Volume #8 | |
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Scandinavia
Sweden will hold the rotating presidency of the EU between January 1, 2001 and June 30, 2001, and announced that it will focus on the three E's: enlargement, environment and employment. Sweden received 11,230 applications for asylum in 1999; most are housed at the Stockholm Reception Center. Denmark. Many European countries that recruited guest workers are dealing with a new phenomenon- arranged marriages in which a legally resident Turk or Moroccan marries a woman from his country of origin. Liberal Denmark is urging immigrants to learn and act Danish: the prime minister, Poul Rasmussen, a center-left Social Democrat, said that he could not accept certain "aspects of the Islamic religion," like interrupting work with prayer: "It must be clear that in Denmark we work in the workplace." After Denmark found that 90 percent of Danish Turks find spouses in Turkey, legislation was enacted in 2000 to deter any immigrant younger than 25 from bringing a foreign spouse to Denmark. About 15,000 immigrants enter Denmark each year for family unification, and Jakob Buksti, the transport minister, says: "We have to integrate by preventing ghettos, arranged marriages, young women forced to marry men back home. We have to tighten rules on refugees and bringing relatives." Norway. According to opinion polls, the anti-immigration Progress Party in Norway is more popular than the ruling Labor party. Its approval rating has been as high as 35 percent, and its leader, Carl Hagen, is being promoted as the next prime minister. Parliamentary elections will be held in 2001, and it if comes to power, the Progress Party promises to reduce immigration to 1,000 a year. Hagen says that more immigrants will spark social unrest. The Progress Party has promised to cut taxes, spend more of the country's oil revenue to improve the welfare state, and encourage the elderly to move to Spain, where health care is cheaper. The party has also proposed abolishing development aid to the Third World because it says that the money is spent on arms and luxury goods for the elite. The director of the Institution Against Public Discrimination, Akenaton de Leon, fears that hostility against immigrants is widespread and believes that the increased popularity of the Progress Party is a symptom of that fear. He says that some apartment owners have told housing agencies to rent their property to whites only. The most menial jobs require unreasonably high language skills and blacks often find it difficult to get into to nightclubs and restaurants.
Roger Cohen, "For 'New Danes,'
Differences Create a Divide," New York Times, December 18, 2000. | |
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