Tough Immigration Controls Save Denmark $10 Billion in 10 Years

If a country wishes to save its taxpayers some money, it should enact stiff immigration laws. That’s the conclusion of a report from the Danish Integration Ministry, according to Spiegel Online.

Denmark has imposed tough measures to stem the flow of Third World immigrants, and those stricter laws have saved the taxpayers about $10 billion during the past decade. The country now boasts the strictest controls in the European Union. Though the Eurocrat left has voiced opposition to the tighter controls, conservatives believe that Denmark is in better shape than most countries that have been overrun by immigrants, many of whom join the welfare rolls and commit crimes.

Details

The report offers three keys figures, Spiegel notes that the money saved over the last 10 years by Denmark "would supposedly have been spent on social benefits or housing," adding:

According to the figures, migrants from non-Western countries who did manage to come to Denmark have cost the state €2.3 billion, while those from the West have actually contributed €295 million to government coffers.

In other words, Third World immigrants have made little if any contribution to Danish society, while immigrants from the Christian West have.

Regardless of the dynamics, as it does in the United States, the battle in Denmark comes down to right and left; those who wish to preserve Denmark as a country for Danes, and those who wish to transmogrify it into a polyglot nation of multiculturalism.

Thus, says Spiegel, “The report has led to jubilation among right-wing politicians.”

“We now have it in black and white that restrictions [on immigrants] pay off,” said DPP [Danish People's Party] finance spokesman Kristian Thulesen Dahl. The DPP will almost certainly exploit the figures in future negotiations over the Danish economy.

Integration Minister Soren Pind stated the obvious: “Now that we can see that it does matter who comes into the country, I have no scruples in further restricting those who one can suspect will be a burden on Denmark,” he told the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

A key mover behind Danish immigration reform is the Danish People’s Party, led by Pia Kjærsgaard (pictured above left). The DPP doesn't want to import immigrants who sit on welfare. “A Somali who is no good for anything, that is simply not acceptable,” says Kjærsgaard.

The DPP and other conservative immigration reformers in Denmark want a complete halt to non-Western immigration, Spiegel reports.

The left, Spiegel observes, is unhappy. Publishing the obvious about Third World immigrants “has sparked outrage from opposition parties like the centrist Social Liberal Party, which dismissed it as undignified and discriminatory.” Spiegel added:

The party’s integration spokeswoman, Marianne Jelved, said: “A certain group of people is being denounced and being blamed for our deficit, being made into whipping boys."

She added: "We cannot classify people depending on their value to the economy. That is degrading in a democracy that has a basic value of equality.”

Tougher Border Controls

The report strengthens the hand of Danes who are ready to stop immigration altogether, although analysts say that appears unlikely. But Danish immigration patriots are progressing. According to Spiegel, “The number of asylum seekers and relatives of immigrants seeking entry into Denmark dropped by more than two-thirds within nine years as a result of the tough laws.”

As The New American reported last month, the Danes have imposed 24-hour border and customs controls at their country's borders with Germany and Sweden. The Danish People's Party forced the government to enact those controls by withhholding support for a national budget. Blue-collar Danes, the New York Times has reported, are fed up with immigrants. Those workers "chafed the most at ultraliberal immigration policies that allowed thousands of immigrants — from Iran, Iraq and the Balkans — to enter the country in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s," the Times reported.

Pia Kjærsgaard, a leader in Denmark against unrestricted immigration, has parlayed that resentment into a political career, and, theTimes reported, “is widely credited with forcing an overhaul of the country’s immigration policies, now among the most restrictive in Europe.”

Last year, the Danes set up a point system to ensure that immigrants will contribute to Danish society. It offers a set number of points for educational level, and also offers points toward immigration approval in exchange for renouncing public benefits.

Unsurprisingly, the Eurocrats don’t like that measure either. Analysts, however, say the Danes have a basis for concern about their borders, given the flood of Tunisians and Libyans who — having fled the unrest in their own countries — have flooded Italy and attempted to fan out across Europe.

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