Michael de Laine

By Michael de Laine, The Copenhagen Voice, 12 November 2009

The daily newspaper Politiken has started a fund-raising campaign in support of Irak Center, which aims at employing failed Iraqi asylum-seekers. The government and the Danish People’s Party will change the law.

The daily newspaper Politiken has started a fund-raising campaign in support of Irak Center, a new initiative that will employ failed Iraqi asylum-seekers in jobs that pay 32,000 Danish kroner a month. This level of income means the Iraqis can apply for work and residence permits in Denmark under a special scheme that also requires the jobs to be done by people with special expertise.

The centre, set up by the newspaper, will employ as many as possible of the 100 or so failed Iraqi asylum-seekers remaining in Denmark after recent forced repatriations of other Iraqis whose asylum applications have been rejected. The Iraqis will provide information about their country and about the conditions for Iraqi asylum-seekers.

“We’ve decided to help a group of rejected asylum-seekers who have been caught up in the system,” Tøger Seidenfaden, Politiken’s editor-in-chief, told the newspaper. “They’ve been living in a grey zone for years. The UN is still issuing warnings against sending them back to Iraq, and they have been unable to get residence permits in Denmark.”

The government and the Danish People’s Party say they will change the law to end “an abuse of the scheme to attract highly educated people and specialists” to Denmark.

Karsten Lauritzen, integration affairs spokesman for the liberals (Venstre), part of the coalition government, told the newspaper that this scheme must not become a loophole “so rejected asylum-seekers can get around the decisions of the Refugee Appeals Board. If Politiken’s initiative is legal, then we must study the legislation closely. I doubt that Politiken’s initiative will fly very far.”

He is supported by Peter Skaarup, integration affairs spokesman for the Danish People’s Party, who doubted that the Danish Immigration Service would give the go-ahead to jobs in the Irak Center, so allowing the rejected Iraqi asylum-seekers to get residence and work permits.

“The Iraqis probably do not have the qualifications to earn 32,000 kroner a month, so this will probably be an evasion of the law,” Skaarup said.