Last week Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt announced the tightening of asylum rules to stymie the refugee numbers coming in to Denmark, which is anticipated to reach 20,000 for the year, especially as a result of the war in Syria.
The Danish Refugee Council and the radical supporter base have criticized this tightening, reports Jyllands-Posten.
“If it [tightening] affects a third of the refugees, it is too many, because there shouldn’t be anyone who cannot be reunified with their family”, Andreas Kamm, Secretary General of the Danish Refugee Council, told Ritzau.
READ MORE: The largest influx of asylum-seekers in 20 years
No real change
However, Morten Østergaard, leader of De Radikale, has publicly stated that the tightening would not affect many Syrian asylum seekers.
“A very large proportion of the Syrians who arrive [in Denmark] are young men fleeing conscription. They would therefore have a completely normal motive for seeking asylum – that being “individual persecution”; for those, nothing will be changed”, Østergaard said.
Martin Henriksen, Dansk Folkeparti immigration spokesman, criticizes Østergaard’s public comments.
“If word gets around the world that there is a tightening but you can just say that you are individually persecuted, then I can figure out what people are going to put in their application. It is extraordinarily difficult to verify this information for authorities and people smugglers will also pick up what story they have to give to Danish authorities. If one of the countries highest ministers states that you will get asylum if you’re fleeing conscription then this is what they’re going to say”, Henriksen told Jyllands-Posten.
In 2013, two-thirds of asylum seekers from Syria fell under the “individual persecution” category, a number that is equal with this year’s
