COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) – Danish lawmakers voted Tuesday to let police seize valuables worth more than $1,500 from asylum-seekers to help cover their housing and food costs while their cases are being processed.
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Human-rights groups condemned the bill, but they only succeeded in raising the dollar value of possessions refugees are allowed to keep from 3,000 to 10,000 Danish crowns (about $1,450).
The bill has sparked worldwide outrage, especially in the U.S., where the Washington Post noted that confiscating jewellery from refugees had “a particularly bitter connotation in Europe” where the Nazis seized gold and valuables from Jews and others during the Second World War.
The center-right Danish government says asylum seekers will now be treated like Danish citizens on welfare, who have to sell assets above a certain level to be eligible for benefits.
The Parliament also increased the waiting time of arriving families of refugees already in the country from one year to three years.
The “jewelry bill” is the latest attempt by Denmark’s seven-month-old minority center-right government to curb immigration to a country that took in a record 20,000 refugees past year.
The legislation also includes several other measures regarding asylum seekers, for example limiting temporary residence permits to two years.
The United Nations Refugee Agency, also known as the UNHCR, has warned that the proposal violates the UN Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights.
Denmark has defended a plan to remove asylum seekers’ cash and jewellery from them, saying it puts refugees on an “equal” footing with other Danes.
Denmark’s Minister of Immigration and Integration Inger Stojberg listens to the debate in the Danish Parliament, Jan. 26, 2016.
How the Danish people are viewing this new law. After a global outcry over the law, however, goods with sentimental value like wedding rings and family portraits are exempt from seizure.
She said the government’s work now should be focusing on letting the refugees enter the labor market so that they can be better integrated with the Danish society.
Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen of the right-wing Venstre party has shrugged off criticism by calling it “the most misunderstood bill in Denmark’s history”, seemingly more concerned with opinion polls that show 70 percent of Danes rank immigration as their top political concern.
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“Denmark has been tightening its legislation, Sweden has proposed a number of changes and Norway has recently proposed 40 different restrictions – some of these restrictions are even tougher than ones in Denmark”, Christoffersen said. In, Switzerland asylum seekers can not own any assets over $1,000. The cash and proceeds from the sale of the valuables – such as watches and mobile phones – would be used to pay for the asylum seekers’ stay in Denmark.
