Denmark report: strict immigration regulations save ‘billions’

A new report from the Danish government has claimed that strict immigration policies save billions of euros each year.

Despite the report from the Immigration Ministry, which said that the country’s restrictive policies regarding allowing immigrants into the country save around EUR 6.7 billion, the right continues the push to tighten them further.

In recent years Denmark’s laws have been made arguably the strictest in Europe and have dramatically reduced the number of migrants allowed into the small Scandinavian nation. As a result, numerous right-leaning government officials have deemed the new policy a success.

Soren Pind, the right-of-centre Integration Minister said to the Jyllands Posten: “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,” Spiegel Online reports. Pind’s words came after the release of the report, which was published after the right-wing Danish People’s Party (DPP) had commissioned the study.

Meanwhile, centre and left-of-centre Danes, including the Social Liberal Party, have expressed outrage at the study. According to Spiegel Online, Marianne Jelved, the SLP’s integration spokeswoman, said: “A certain group of people is being denounced and being blamed for our deficit, being made into whipping boys.” She went on: “We cannot classify people depending on their value to the economy. That is degrading in a democracy that has a basic value of equality.”

Among other figures, the report claims that immigrants that had made it into Denmark from non-Western nations had cost the taxpayer some EUR 2.3 billion, whilst immigrants from the West had brought government coffers contributions amounting to EUR 2.3 billion.