As Joe Biden issues orders to discontinue construction of the border wall and prepare for an onslaught of undocumented refugees from Latin America, the Prime Minister of Denmark has publicly stated that her government’s goal to not to accept asylum seekers at all.
In comments before the Danish Parliament, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said her goal with regard to accepting refugees is to reduce asylum applications in Denmark to zero.
“That’s what our target is. Of course, we can’t promise it,” she said. “We can’t promise zero asylum seekers but we can create a vision, like we did before the election, that we want a new asylum system and then do what we can to implement it.”
Frederiksen’s vision for Denmark is increasingly shared by many Nordic and European nations who have labored to absorb refugees who have streamed into the European Continent from the Middle East and Africa over the past two decades.
Demark & France call for tougher EU border controls and a new system for dealing with immigrants & asylum seekers in a joint statement by Mette Frederiksen the Danish Prime Minister and Macron saying that the current system is "broken" pic.twitter.com/p6Ai4ZnGJ7
— Vetrissimo (@vetrissimo) December 2, 2019
The Danish vision is not one shared by the Biden administration.
President Biden promised to increase the yearly refugee admissions cap to 125,000 from 15,000. This will require the Biden administration to rebuild the refugee resettlement system, a system that created micro-communities like the Islamic-centric Dearborn, Michigan, and the predominantly Somali community in Minnesota represented by US Rep. Ilhan Omar (R-MN).
With regard to asylum seekers, the Biden administration has expressed a desire to terminate the November 2018 asylum ban, the July 2019 third country transit ban, the Migrant Protection Protocols, the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, and the Prompt Asylum Claim Review and Humanitarian Asylum Review Process procedures that place prerequisite conditions for asylum in the United States.
Additionally, Mr. Biden seeks to terminate Mr. Trump’s bans, regulations, and international agreements that Democrats and Progressives feel have all but gutted the US asylum system.
In 2019, the Danish government indicated it would resume accepting refugees under the quota system established by the United Nations, doing so after a three-year hiatus under the previous administration.
But Frederiksen’s Social Democratic government has, for the most part, pursued a strict policy on asylum and immigration, in keeping with the platform they campaigned on two years ago.
“We must take care that not too many [refugees] come to our country, otherwise our social cohesion could not exist. It is already under threat,” Frederiksen said.