It raised some eyebrows last month when it emerged that Gentofte Municipality, Denmark’s richest, would be housing fewer refugees than the rest of the country’s municipalities because it was already home to so many foreigners in the form of au pairs and highly-skilled internationals. But the so-called ‘au pair rule’ has been reversed and Gentofte will now receive three times as many refugees, DR reports.
This year Gentofte has been allocated 104 refugees, according to the system of distribution quotas, but next year this will be increased to 294.
Focus on ‘real’ integration
The immigration service Udlændingestyrelsen has changed the requirements with a stronger emphasis on municipalities’ duty to carry out integration. This means that foreign au pairs, agricultural interns, researchers, students and expat employees are no longer included in the number of non-EU residents already registered in the municipality for the purposes of determining how much ‘integration’ there already is.
Inger Støjberg, the immigration minister, implied that these groups do not figure in municipalities’ task to integrate foreigners.
“The distribution model for how many refugees a municipality should accept should reflect the real task of integration and we are therefore removing these groups from the equation,” she said.
Denmark originally committed to receiving 12,000 refugees but this number has since increased to 17,000.
