Immigration is always on the agenda

In Denmark, it’s called “cucumber time,” the silly season for trivial news in the summer when nothing important is happening. In the past two weeks, however, the media have been dominated by the macabre story of a sunken submarine and missing Swedish journalist. But the Danish MPs have in fact been at work on proposals for measures affecting refugees, immigration and integration. Here is a summary.

As I mentioned last week, in response to an increase in shootings in Copenhagen, the minister of justice introduced a package intended to combat gang crime and violence. The week afterward, the Municipality of Copenhagen announced a set of initiatives intended to do the same. They concentrate on improving the coordinated efforts of social workers and the police, and they include visits to the homes of young men vulnerable to recruitment, a program to help gang members leave gangs safely, and assistance finding jobs for ghetto residents.

Liars and beggars

The government announced a proposal for a ban on permanent residence permission for refugees who are caught lying about their circumstances in applications for asylum. This concerns mainly young people who claim to be under 18 in order to obtain preferential treatment, and the Immigration and Integration Ministry reports that three-quarters of the applicants subjected to an age test were judged to be over 18. This would be measure No. 65 in the government’s campaign to restrict immigration. Critics argue that uncertainties and misunderstandings can easily arise in the hearings when interpreters are used. The proposal wouldn’t rescind applicants’ rights to temporary asylum under international conventions.

In June, Parliament passed a bill that made begging a crime punishable by two weeks in jail over the protests of organizations for the homeless. This came after an increase in foreign indigents camping out in city parks and other public places. More recently, the Danish People’s Party, the country’s most vehement anti-immigration party, proposed placing notices in Romanian newspapers warning about the policy in order to prevent people from coming. The measure is reminiscent of the ads placed in Lebanese newspapers to dissuade refugees from coming to the country.

Burkas and Muslim schools

Another measure that the Danish People’s Party has proposed several times is a ban on burkas or full facial covering. The Conservative Party has supported the ban, and now the Liberal Party expects it to be adopted soon. The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled that Belgium could implement such a prohibition, and the Norwegian government is also considering it. The small Liberal Alliance Party, which gives the right-wing coalition its very slim mandate, is against the ban, but the Social Democrats would consider a proposal.

In one of the proposals with the most wide-reaching implications, Mette Frederiksen, the leader of the Social Democrats, called for the closure of Muslim private schools in which the majority of pupils are non-Danish. This came after reporting by the BT daily on a headmaster who posted anti-Semitic images on social media. Noting that these schools may also promote values in conflict with the principles of democracy and sexual equality, Frederiksen questioned whether they are helping or hindering integration. The proposal itself may be in conflict with the European Human Rights Convention.

The latest announcements came from the administration: plans to contribute to a program to protect religious minorities abroad, particularly Christian minorities in the Middle East and North Africa, and the addition of two names to the blacklist of foreign “hate preachers.”

Xenophobia, intolerance?

So, significant things are happening behind the cucumber dressing. These measures of course reflect the tendency across Europe towards nationalism and isolationism. They may seem overly stringent, politically incorrect, even anti-humanitarian or racist, and they damage Denmark’s progressive reputation. They test the limits of certain provisions in human rights conventions, and some are contested and even invalidated. Then the legislators will try to find another way around the problem. That’s the democratic process.

And that’s a more important factor than one’s opinion on a given issue. There is a real debate here. The minority government must negotiate and compromise in order to muster a majority in Parliament. Cabinet members, other government officials, interest groups and affected citizens actually hold discussions in which they are not simply talking past each other while grandstanding for their own constituencies. When the center-left Social Democrats endorse selected measures as well as propose their own, they pass with a large majority.

Whose democracy is under siege?

Compare this with the situation in the United States, where there is growing polarization and now violent conflicts between nativists and proponents of identity politics as witnessed in the Charlottesville debacle. Congress can’t do anything about it, the executive branch exacerbates it, the two branches cannot collaborate, and executive orders are overturned by the courts.

Denmark is in the Islamic State’s sights. The recent events in Spain and Finland could have taken place here. The current wave of violence in Copenhagen and nearby Malmö, Sweden, involves gangs with predominately minority members who live in an alienated, “parallel society.” Certain controls and precautions are realistic and necessary. The Danish campaign on immigration and integration is not based on tricks, mystification and demagoguery. It consists of mainly incremental measures that often have international precedents. Most important, they are implemented by a functioning democracy. That’s what’s sorely lacking now in the US.

Unsafe streets

In the past two months, Wonderful Copenhagen has seen a rash of shootings – around 25. They are often drive-by shootings by masked young men on mopeds that are believed to be related to gang conflicts. Many have taken place in Nørrebro and northwest Copenhagen, districts with high concentrations of immigrants and poverty. The police have increased their presence in the area and introduced stricter policies allowing them to stop and search suspicious figures. Nevertheless, the violence has increased in the past week, with at least one shooting every day.

This is unusual. Such shooting sprees may occur every couple of years when skirmishes over gang turf heat up, but they are not a typical phenomenon in Copenhagen and elsewhere in Denmark. No one has been killed in this latest series of attacks, although some of the victims were in critical condition. People have been hit only in about half the cases. But one factor that has increased the concern among neighborhood residents is that some of the victims have been random passersby with no connection to the gangs involved. The police have issued warnings to young men who may be on the streets in these areas. The US embassy even sent out a warning to American citizens to take extra care when in the neighborhoods.

Sharing the blame

On Monday evening, a group of residents of the area held a torchlit march to protest these developments and take back control of their streets. They complain that the police aren’t doing enough to the prevent the violence. The police, in turn, complain that they do not have enough staffing to do an adequate job, partly because of their duties guarding the border since immigration rules have been made stricter. And the Minister of Justice, Søren Pape Poulsen of the Conservative Party, introduced a new package intended to curb the violence. The measures include efforts to prevent recruitment to gangs, increasing resources to track digital clues to gang activity, and the registration of people who wear bullet-proof vests.

The point is not that Copenhagen is a violent and dangerous place but that this trend is atypical. The crime rate in Denmark is relatively low. In 2015, the intentional homicide rate in Denmark was 0.99 per 100,000 inhabitants. In comparison, in the US, it was nearly five times as high, at 4.88.  Gun ownership is uncommon except among hunters, who need licenses; people don’t own firearms for protection. The prison population is small. Multiple murders of the type that occur in the US every week are unheard of. The local police forces aren’t militarized either, and there is nothing resembling the practice of civil forfeiture in the US. Aside from isolated incidents, most violent crimes involve gangs and their drug trade.

Reefer madness

And as far as I understand, most of the drug trade involves hashish, which raises another issue that seems curiously missing from the discussion of the current wave of violence. Considering Denmark’s reputation for being progressive in public policy, the country is curiously out of step with the trend toward cannabis decriminalization not only in the US but also in much of Western Europe. Drug trade used to be centered on the Freetown Christiania district across the canal from downtown Copenhagen. A crackdown there in 2012 introduced draconian penalties for users as well as dealers. For example, for the first offense, drivers who show traces of cannabis that may have come from consumption a week before lose their driver’s license for three years and get a fine of 4 percent of their gross salary. The result of the concerted effort in Christiania was that the trade spread to other areas in Copenhagen, as the police had predicted it would.

The mayor of Copenhagen, Social Democrat Frank Jensen, and the left-leaning city council, have proposed legalizing cannabis on a trial basis on a few occasions, primarily for the purpose of controlling distribution and reducing violent crime. Every time, the proposal was rejected by the right-wing parties and Social Democrats representing a large majority in Parliament. There is a trial project to allow medical marijuana, and the population is roughly evenly divided on the issue of legalization. But among polite society, weed is still associated with social dysfunction and legalization is considered encouragement. In all the alarm about the recent spate of shootings, I haven’t noticed any mention of the decriminalization option. The violence may subside again, but it will probably recur as long as the country remains a holdout in the futile war on drugs.

Royalty and national pride

There he goes again. Now Prince Henrik, the husband of Queen Margrethe, has announced that he won’t be buried with the queen in the sarcophagus in Roskilde Cathedral specially constructed for them by a prominent sculptor. This proud French nobleman has complained for years about not being made king, and when he retired from active duty last year at the age of 81, he gave up the title of prince consort, which had distinguished him from his male progeny but still rankled. For this latest stunt, he was immediately criticized by royalty experts as well as many of his subjects for besmirching a long tradition.

One of the most glaring differences between the nations of Denmark and the United States, of course, is that the former is a monarchy, in fact “the world’s oldest existing” one. The institution of the royal family, particularly the current one despite the wayward paterfamilias, is held in high regard by the vast majority of the citizenry, and one could ask how it contributes to the Danes’ vaunted happiness and life satisfaction. It is evidently no small source of national pride. It fosters a sense of shared identity, history, tradition and continuity. Its rituals, pageantry and bygone decorum foster a warm, fuzzy feeling and a reminder of time when Denmark ruled much of northern Europe – at least when the current figureheads are behaving properly.

Just doing their job

The queen is a talented painter and designer. The maturing, amiable crown prince is a triathlete. His brother is a more questionable character who alienated his first wife and then found a second who bears an uncanny resemblance to the crown prince’s romantic catch from Tasmania. People follow their elaborate wedding preparations, the ceremonial parades in horsedrawn coaches, their toddlers starting day-care with ordinary offspring; they see the entire family all gathered live on the palace balcony twice a year smiling and waving to the commoners below. Journalists hastily brief us on the backgrounds of the privileged guests at gala dinners and the decorations conferred on the captains of industry and steadfast civil servants. The queen gives a brief speech on New Year’s Eve urging her subjects to be tolerant and generous and thanking Greenlanders for their hospitality on official visits.

There’s a tame weekly picture magazine devoted to the Danish royals and their European counterparts that rarely uncovers more than mild scandals over special dispensations for fox hunts and other indulgences. Now, by making an ultimatum of his demand for the title, Prince Henrik has upped the ante, provoking some to condemn tabloid sensationalism exploiting an old man who needs help.

Not the Wild West

It has always puzzled me that countries with socialist inclinations want to elevate a group of people solely because of an accident of birth and get sentimental about feudal costumes. When asked about this, Danes often respond that they couldn’t bear an American-style president. That seems like a straw man (granted, a scary one in its current incarnation). It may be reasonable to prefer a parliamentary system based on consensus and compromise to a strong, sometimes unpredictable executive branch, but parliamentary democracy doesn’t require a non-political head of state to formally sign the laws and entertain foreign dignitaries. The president of Germany is basically only a ceremonial figurehead no one has heard of. The Danes’ pride in the royal family must involve something visceral that supersedes political argument.

Others make a different comparison with the US, explaining the endurance of the royals by noting that there’s no Hollywood here and people need some celebrities for gossip fodder. You can turn that comparison around and say that if movie, music and sports stars are a sort of royalty, then a closer equivalent is reality TV stars, who like the royals gained their fame by chance more than merit. And of course today both of these bad alternatives have merged as reality TV has taken over the White House.

Insurrection

Only a few lonely Danish republicans want to abolish the institution. A couple of years ago, the intrepid columnist Anne Sofie Hermansen launched a debate on the issue, proposing that if it couldn’t be removed, the royal family should be financed by a voluntary tax, like the church tax. She was drowned out by a chorus of apologists whose strongest argument was simply that a majority of citizens wanted to keep it and didn’t mind the expense. About one third think they’re too expensive, but that means only that the shopping trips are getting too extravagant. Lately, with the proliferation of grandchildren, their allowances have been reduced.

But hardly anyone seems to feel it contradicts the fundamental principles of democracy and socialism. Even some on the far left, who aren’t satisfied by the highest marginal income tax rate in the world, won’t touch the third rail of the current figureheads’ entitlements. Some proponents maintain that the royals are a good investment as tourist bait and international trade reps, but Hermansen and others contest that claim. In any case, we’re unlikely to see the blue bloods sent out into the labor market to find gainful employment. In the worst case, they’ve probably hoarded enough of those tax revenues to slink away to Monaco and sip their cocktails in peace.

Only a sperm donor?

My pet theory is that in the most heavily taxed nation on earth, wasting some of those taxes to support one particular family in grand style demonstrates the nation’s surplus treasure. The embarrassing irony is that they’re more compelling and entertaining to follow when they act foolishly and waste taxpayers’ money – that is, they earn their keep by being unworthy of it. In this regard, Prince Henrik’s intransigent petulance succeeds wonderfully. He doesn’t even want to be buried in the land of égalité, so in forcing Denmark to find him a suitable alternative gravesite, he has managed to take his own future remains hostage. By disgracing the most solemn ceremony in the land, the monarch’s funeral, he highlights Denmark’s principled refusal to be cowed into crowning an interloper who has never even learned to speak the language quite fluently. Even though the heir apparent is half-French, Prince Henrik has unwittingly reinforced the integrity of the Danish tribe.

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In praise of shitty weather

You would think that climate could be ruled out as a large factor in the Danes’ happiness. The weather is generally considered one of the biggest drawbacks to the region. The end of July is the high season for reckoning and complaining. That’s when meteorologists tally up the number of “summer days” in what is supposed to be the warmest month. They are defined as those that reach 25 degrees Celsius (77 Fahrenheit) or above. This year the first one didn’t come until the 30^th, which also brought violent thunderstorms across the country. To be fair, June was a little warmer than usual, hitting 83 on one of the southernmost islands, but the summer still qualifies for the Danish epithet "shit weather."

Growing up mostly in the American northeast, I had been taught to avoid overdosing on the midday summer sun. I used to wear a hat and a t-shirt at the beach. When I moved to Denmark, I noticed people jumping onto a blanket on the lawn at the first bout of sunlight in the spring and sitting on benches with their faces tilted upwards and their eyes blissfully closed luxuriating in the hint of warmth. They aren’t getting a tan for reasons of vanity, I have since learned. Their bodies are starved for vitamin D. Apparently everyone in these latitudes has a deficiency if they don’t gobble supplements or get a time-share in Malaga. So after living here for 20 years, I’ve joined the crowd and begun stocking up on brief spells of sunshine and extra vitamins.

Go south

So people often lament that summer hardly came at all. They wear light jackets to work and carry an umbrella. Parents who spend the first five days of their vacation cooped up with stir-crazy kids in a small summerhouse on the west coast scramble to find last-minute cancellation tickets to southern Europe to salvage their vacation. The cool summers are also a big handicap for Danish tourism. When someone on Quora asks for recommendations of places to settle in Europe, Denmark doesn’t even register on the radar. Everyone thinks Mediterranean; no one retires northward.

And then there are the long winters when it’s dark when you leave for work in the morning and dark again when you go home. Even if you use your lunch break for a brisk walk in natural light, it’s weak because the sun is low on the horizon. So people go to solariums or use special lamps to recharge and stave off seasonal depression. Or spend the Christmas or winter holidays in Thailand. In the spring and fall, it’s possible to tank up on sun without traveling so far; having five or six weeks of paid vacation makes it easier.

Chilling naturally

But the Nordic climate has some advantages. The long, light summer evenings are comfortable and pleasant, sometimes charming. On the midsummer holiday, Saint John’s Eve, people gather round a bonfire and listen to a speech by a local politician and sing songs. There’s no need for air conditioning, which on visits to the US now often seems to run more than necessary and far too cool, besides consuming an unconscionable amount of energy since the demographic shift to the Southwest in the past 50 years.

Denmark’s climate stays in relatively narrow range. It’s not especially cold in the winter, and heavy snowfalls are rare. That enables people to bicycle to work year-round if they keep their rain gear at the ready. It doesn’t appear that global warming has raised the temperature significantly; rather, it is making the weather unpredictable, bringing spates of unseasonable conditions along with some storms that seem more extreme than before.

Be careful what you wish for

Storms here mean mainly high winds, without or without precipitation. They cause flooding on some coastal stretches and bring down tree branches. But they’re still moderate in comparison with the extremes in America – the hurricanes, tornadoes, huge snowstorms, floods, mudslides, sweltering heat waves and droughts that lead to forest fires – weather of biblical proportions that wreaks havoc, kills people, extracts great costs, and makes credible the notion that a stern god is keeping track of our misdeeds.

Perhaps Denmark’s disrespected weather fits into the “low expectations” theory of Danish happiness. In the same way that incomes cluster around the median level, it doesn’t get as good or as bad as in many other places. If the base scenario is that the weather sucks, then any improvement feels like a bonus.

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