Lawmakers in Denmark passed measures this week that allow the seizure of assets from asylum seekers and prolongs the separation of families traveling to Europe.
The new bill has become known as the "jewelry bill" because it allows officials to seize assets from asylum seekers worth more than 10,000 Danish kroner or about $1,453, excluding items of “special sentimental value” like wedding rings, according to CNN. The Danish Ministry of Immigration and Housing says watches, mobile phones and computers will be confiscated to ensure asylum seekers are contributing to the country’s generous welfare state.
Denmark received more than 21,000 refugees last year but nearby Sweden received more than 160,000 — the most per capita in Europe, according to the BBC. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have traveled to Europe in recent years, fleeing violence in the Middle East and Africa.
"All Danish citizens and refugees coming here receive universal health care; you receive education from preschool to university, and you receive elderly care; you receive language training and integration training free of charge, paid for by the government," Liberal Party spokesman Jakob Ellemann-Jensen told CNN's Christiane Amanpour last month.
"The only demand that we set to measure this is if you have the means to pay for your housing and for your food — regardless of whether you are a Dane or whether you are a refugee — then you should."
Switzerland has a similar policy where valuables from asylum seekers over 1,000 Swiss Francs ($985) can be taken and a state in Germany seizes assets above 350 euros ($380) and, according to Reuters, other states are doing the same.
Even though more than 200,000 migrants traveled to Europe in 2015, they make up far less than 1 percent of the 740 million current residents of Europe, according to The Guardian. In comparison, Lebanon has a population of only 4.5 million people but hosts more than 1.2 million Syrian refugees. "A country that is more than 100 times smaller than the EU has already taken in more than 50 times as many refugees as the EU will even consider resettling in the future," wrote The Guardian.
The new bill has brought criticism from around the world and across the political spectrum. Amnesty International called the bill part of a “race to the bottom” where many European countries are enacting increasingly intolerant policies to discourage asylum seekers from entering their countries.
In addition to allowing the seizure of assets, the bill also extends the period that those who are resettled must wait to apply for family members to join them in Denmark. The waiting period increased from one to three years and Amnesty International is saying that in addition to being unethical the measures risk violating several international human rights agreements on the treatment of refugees. “Separation can have a devastating impact on families, including their rehabilitation from experiences of trauma and their ability to integrate and adapt to life in a new country,” said Amnesty International.
“Denmark was one of the first champions of the Refugee Convention, but its government is now brazenly creating blocks to the well-being and safety of refugee families,” said Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Europe and Central Asia.
Thursday morning, NPR's Steve Inskeep spoke with Martin Henriksen of the Danish People's Party about the new bill and asked if the bill was really about keeping refugees out of Denmark.
Denmark does not have a history of being an immigration magnet, according to The Atlantic, but it hasn’t been unwelcoming either. Being squeezed between the top two destination nations for asylum seekers, Germany and Sweden, has helped raise Denmark’s applications for asylum from 14,815 in 2014 to 21,000 in 2015. About 10 percent of the country’s 6 million total population are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.
Describing the national attitude toward asylum seekers in Denmark, Demetrios Papademetriou, the president of the Migration Policy Institute’s Europe center, said, “I want to protect the fact that my country, a small country, is an extremely wealthy country; that it provides these exceptional benefits to its people; and I don’t want to compromise my ability to receive those benefits simply because more and more people want to come in.”
“But,” The Atlantic writes, “the people need to go somewhere.”