Not welcome in Denmark? Right-wing parties call for deportation of refugees

The right-wing Danish People’s Party (DF) and the libertarian party Liberal Alliance (LA) have called on Danish authorities to stop welcoming refugees – and instead put them back on the plane to their country of origin.

DF (Dansk Folkeparti, or Danish People’s Party) were more harsh and straightforward of the two, with their spokesman Martin Henriksen telling Politiko media outlet that the party would like to see no refugees in Denmark whatsoever.

“I think that with one stroke, this would make Denmark incredibly uninteresting for asylum seekers and therefore believe that the asylum figures would plummet when they can’t receive a residence permit in Denmark,” Henriksen said.

"We will still honor our obligation to help refugees, but we will just do it in a different way," he added.
DF also proposed to set up Danish-controlled refugee camps in “an African country, a country in Asia or the Middle East.”

Their colleagues from Liberal Alliance supported the cause.

“Figuratively speaking, they should be turned around at the airport, put on a plane and sent to a refugee camp in the area of where they came from,” LA leader Anders Samuelsen told Danish media outlet Jyllands-Posten.

He said that the refugees should get help abroad, unlike “the lucky ones” who manage to come to Denmark.

"We want to create a little bit of Denmark in Jordan, Lebanon or Israel, where we would be responsible for financing and operating refugee camps," Samuelsen said.

Opposition party Venstre, which is viewed as a possible successor to the current ruling Social Democrats, said the proposals were “interesting” but hasn’t expressed its full support.

“In Venstre, we have for years thought that we should help more refugees in their communities, so therefore this is of course an interesting suggestion. My worry would be whether we could get the other countries to take on the responsibility, but it’s something we will look at,” Venstre spokeswoman Inger Støjberg told Politiko.

Only the ruling Social Democrats firmly rejected the idea, calling it “obscene.”

In 2014, Denmark expects around 20,000 refugees to arrive in the country. Next year, some estimate the figure will rise to 50,000. The country’s authorities say Denmark can’t accommodate all of them, and in any case it would be "just a drop in the sea."