The 14,815 people who sought asylum in Denmark last year is
nearly double the number from the year before and an almost fourfold
increase from 2009.
The number of refugees seeking asylum in Denmark nearly doubled
in 2014, newly-released figures from the Danish Immigration Service
(Udlændingestyrelsen - DIS) show.
A total
of 14,815 people sought asylum in 2014. Although the final number ended
up significantly below the government’s estimate of 20,000, it is still
nearly double the number from 2013, when 7,557 asylum seekers made their
way to Denmark.
The 2014 numbers represent a nearly fourfold increase over 2009, when just 3,855 asylum seekers came to the country.
Nearly half of all the asylum seekers in 2014 came from war-torn
Syria. The 7,185 Syrians who sought asylum in Denmark were more than
three times larger than the next biggest group: 2,293 Eritreans.
The number of refugees seeking and receiving asylum in Denmark was a
dominant topic among the nation’s politicians and media throughout much
of 2014.
In September, the government announced that it would introduce a new, temporary type of residence permit
for asylum seekers fleeing civil wars such as the Syrian conflict after
a huge surge in the number of applications. Two weeks later, that was
followed by the introduction of new restrictions on the ability of
refugees to have their family members join them in Denmark. Those
restrictions were criticised by the United Nations Refugee Agency
(UNHCR) and a long line of human rights organisations.
Denmark also controversially announced that it would tighten restrictions on Eritrean asylum seekers. After the number of Eritrean refugees spiked over the summer, the justice minister called on DIS to carry out a ‘fact-finding’ mission, the results of which were so heavily criticised that the government ultimately had to admit that it had “doubts” about the report and that Eritreans can expect to be "granted asylum in many cases".
While the government was making it more difficult for refugees to get
asylum in Denmark, opposition parties wanted to go even further,
suggesting that asylum seekers should receive worse conditions or simply be sent back to where they came from.
All of the asylum talk seemed to have a negative impact on the Danish people. One poll from December showed that 44 percent of Danes are sometimes “ashamed”
by the national debate on immigration and foreigners while another
showed that 51 percent of Danes think that the debate over asylum
seekers has gone too far.
Denmark’s integration minister, Manu Sareen, said the results of the polls should serve as a wake-up call.
“We – especially those of us here in Christiansborg – should sometimes
stop and think about how we talk about people. Words create realities
and that means that we as politicians have a responsibility,” Sareen
told Berlingske at the time.
Of the 14,815
refugees who sought asylum in Denmark last year, 6,110 of them were
granted refugee status. That 41 percent approval rate was lower than the
51 percent who were granted asylum in 2013.
Denmark’s costs for housing refugees in 2014 is expected to be 9.2
billion kroner ($1.4 billion), a near doubling of the 4.7 billion kroner
asylum costs in 2013.
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