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Happening today beneath the surface
Sahra Wagenknecht plays kingmaker in Germany
Sahra Wagenknecht's upstart party is disrupting German politics. Credit: Getty
Happening today beneath the surface
Sahra Wagenknecht's upstart party is disrupting German politics. Credit: Getty
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SubscribeExcited to see what happens. She more or less mirrors my own views – if you ask me about the economy, trade unions, etc. I’m all in favour of it, from strikes to sectoral bargaining.
But I don’t see how you maintain a society capable of sustaining that sort of delicate social democratic system when you import people of profoundly different cultural values. That they have different values doesn’t mean they must be punished in any sense – but they might well need to be kept outside our borders.
Denmark refuses, and has done for about five years now, to provide citizenship to refugees. Their argument is this: We abide by international law by allowing them leave to remain here while the conflict which puts them in danger, but no further; once the danger ends, they go back. No citizenship, certainly not by default.
There are many other elements of it, but it’s something we can and should learn from.
I’m pretty certain refugees don’t ever get citizenship “by default” – there’s almost always a range of requirements to be met, from a certain period living in the country whose citizenship they apply for, absence of criminal record, meeting certain income requirements etc.
What Denmark could have done with its citizenship laws is to say that if someone comes to the country as an asylum seeker, then the period of time that they legally reside in Denmark as an asylum seeker/as a person granted asylum or subsidiary status does not count towards the period of residency required to become a Danish citizen.
But what with other EU countries loosening their citizenship laws (Germany), then former refugees/beneficiaries of subsidiary status can still move to Denmark once they have attained EU citizenship from another EU country. I reckon the numbers that do that must be fairly low, though.