Log In Search 
David Leonhardt joins Emily to report back from his recent New York Times investigation into Denmark’s immigration politics. Leonhardt explains why the Danish left navigated the issue better than others.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeNot at all impressive.
He is really pleased with his observation that immigrants commit crime at a lower rate, and that this is somehow an argument for immigration.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that less immigration would mean less crime.
Doh.
This discussion is good except for the confusion of the basic detail….in the U.S. the issue was and is not immigration it’s illegal immigration. Emily why not make this point?
Respectfully, NO, it’s ALL immigration at this point.
We simply have too many foreign-born with foreign-born attitudes, beliefs and cultures. We are too watered-down, and with overtly toxic ingredients. This will be fatal, as it was for many societies foregoing.
We need to take a pause until we are *at least* 90% native-born. Otherwise, we will become a different society. Some argue it would be better. I’ll stick with proven practices.
I was born in Denmark. I left Denmark for London in my twenties, and have lived nearly 40 years in NYC. The Danes are by and large not racists in any traditional sense. One might ask, how could they be when their country is so overwhelmingly homogeneous. Interracial experience, including racial prejudice, is, to my thinking, a mostly academic exercise for the average Dane. Nor are most Danes backward rubes. The lovely Danes are, however, somewhat parochial xenophobes. They don’t discriminate against various kinds of foreigners (or natives with a foreign education); foreigners all belong to one group. And that group is not [as good as those who are] Danish.
The key to understanding why the Danish left is in agreement with its right counterpart on immigration is to be found in the xenophobia of a small, homogeneous country in which a natural language barrier protects the core culture from foreign influence.