38 thoughts on “Denmark, Switzerland Seize Migrants’ Valuables on Entering Their Countries – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. “..t’s one of the dumbest, most offensive since just about any law you can find before the Israeli Knesset”

    So now you’re smearing Israel with a Swiss law?

    1. @ Barbar: actually Israel’s situation is worse. Israel doesn’t permit refugees or migrants to enter the country, but if they do it throws them in prison camps and attempts to expel them in violation of international refugee law.

      At least the Swiss and the Danish allow immigrants to enter their country. Then penalizes them by taking away their assets.

    2. @ Barbar: Would you like me to quote you the utterly offensive, racist laws and bills passed or proposed by this Knesset? Then shall we compare them to EU laws, even these two stupid ones, to see which is more offensive??

      BTW, have you finished wiping that egg off your face when Kerry freed five Americans only a few hrs after you dissed him in a comment here for being powerless to help them. Couldn’t you eat just a wee bit of crow on that one?

  2. Refugees supposedly relocate for their own safety (as opposed to work migrants). If this is indeed the case, there should be no problem in confiscating their paltry belongings, housing them in fenced barracks (possibly segregated by sex to alleviate sexual assault concerns), providing basic nourishment, and putting them to work in useful enterprises bordering the fenced barracks.

    After a reasonable period of 5-15 years, the migrants could be deemed (if they behave properly, etc.) fit for integration in the local society.

    This would on the one hand provide physical safety for genuine, and on the other hand deter people who are interested in migrating for higher paying jobs.

    1. Yeah, lex….
      I lived in South Africa back in the ’60s….
      I know the apartheid psychotic paradigms of entrenched privilege and the bureaucrat jackboot.
      Every Eichmann in the r€Uch will be doing his numbercrunch spreadsheets.

    2. @lepxii: you are now our official resident racist. I usually rebut arguments offered by people like you. But in your case I think the arguments speak for themselves. And they do speak volumes. Racist volumes.

  3. I just think these illegal migrants have no right to stay in Europe.

    They should be deported once they get to the border. If they previously knew they have no chance to stay in Europe, then they would not risk their lives and mafias that take them to Europe would have no business.

    Europe should take lessons from Australia.

    1. Maybe if our mi£itari$€d mafias were not bugsplatting their villages and our ‘specia£ forc€$ not training so many moderate terrorists they might ot be so desperate….this all the consequence on an atavistic hominid imperialist mindset waging corporate mercenary hi-tech wars on formerly stable societies via manufactured propaganda.
      Do a little reading.

    2. You are not a European, yet you tell us what to do. That is your right. You have your harsh Israeil morals, so much is clear.
      What is also clear is that taking in refugees generally does not benefit the countries that do so, at least not financially. That is not the issue. Sometimes you just have to do what is right.

        1. @ Arik:

          Europeans have any reservations about getting involved in Israel. By what right?

          By right of the hundreds of millions of Euros which EU citizens spend on Israeli exports and the credit lines offered by Euro banks to Israeli companies and the Euro mortgages financing Israeli properties. Or would you be OK if all that disappeared? Because it could, you know. Along with billions more in aid, loans & trade offered by U.S. companies, consumers, government and financial institutions.

        2. Israel only costs Europe, while Europe subsidizes and supports Israel in all kinds of ways. And anyway, did I not say ‘sweet boy’ has the right to tell Europeans what he thinks? So do we.

    3. @Good little boy: interesting that you don’t suggest Israel as a model or example to follow. Perhaps that’s because Israel now houses 60,000 refugees that it doesn’t know what to do with. Although I guess both Australia and Israel are treating the refugees in their midst in an equally reprehensible, despicable way so it’s a toss up whether to use Australia or Israel as a model for the European future

      I hope that Europe chooses neither, and goes its own way. I hope Europe will find a reasonable compromise between tolerance and empathy, and adhering to the rule of law. But the true answer is to resolve the conflicts in the regions from which these refugees originate. That would stop the refugee flow.

  4. Well if the European countries would like to make “money” they would not take the relatively few belongings the “refugees” have., they would do the same as Nazis did, attack their wealthy and prosperous minorities, like Jews. It is clear that what Denmark and others now do is intended simply to send the message for those planing .to immigrate to Europe as refugees. It is risky and has many price tags. And only real refugees are allowed to stay, others are shipped back.

    Finland got in 2015 (1-11) 30,641 refugees. Of them only 752 came from Syria, 19857 came from Iraq, 4575 from Afghanistan, 749 from Albania etc. Only 2.5 percent of the refugees came from Syria. The overwhelming majority came from countries where there is no war, but without doubt poverty and unemployment. Which makes them economical immigrants, not those who need a sanctuary for political etc reasons to save their life. Even in Finland the amount of Iraqis as refugees is astonishing high also
    in other EU countries the majority are not refugees from war zones. Most are simply seeking a better life (=more income), which makes them not refugees.

    Also one should take in the notice the incredible amounts of the these “refugees” and that they are rather “different” by religion, customs etc than the majority population in countries they want to settle. The fact that the majority are young men is a real problem as we have lately have been able to read in the news. Also here In Finland this fact has had some very negative consequences. It is clear that Europe can not continue to receive so much refugees in 2016 as it did in 2015. Europe must put Middle East in “control”. We simply can not allow large countries like Iran (81 million), Yemen (24 million) etc became new failed states in those numerous US/Israeli/Saudi “influence” wars.

  5. one must also note that the “refugees” reaching Europe after crossing several state borders (including safe countries), not working for several weeks and months, and paying hundreds and thousands of dollars for transit, food, and smuggling costs….. Are relatively well-off to begin with.

    The people who are really hard hit by war, famine, natural disaster, etc. – are often unable to even consider such a move. They don’t have the hopes and aspirations for such a move.

    Any true treatment of refugees (and of people in deep poverty) would treat them -at the source-, by either helping them where they live and/or relocating some of the them to other countries (including the west).

    The current treatment of dealing only with those who make the long journey (and piling on difficulties to avoid having them reach your border) is really, basically, a sham of trying to comply with the prima facie of the refugee conventions and not with the actual acute human suffering.

    1. Have you noticed how some of those ‘safe’ countries treat them? They may have been well off at home but their resources are spent on paying smugglers and staying alive.
      I agree by the way that offering massive help in the area’s closest to the conflict where the people who are most poor get stuck is of major importance.

      To you they are rich and merely ‘refugees’, liars and leeches in other words?
      How come then, they stayed in their home countries when there was no war? Only now they are leaving everyrthing behind.

      1. Many of the migrants to Europe are not from Syria. Estimates vary regarding origin, as many use fake Syrian passports (actually Syrians also use fake Syrian passports – as many left Syria without papers!) – but it is quite obvious that there are many from North Africa, Afghanistan, etc.
        The ones from Syria and Iraq are not always innocent sheep – many regime fighters have decided to go this route.

        Why do they go? Because the door is open (if only a crack).

        If Europe was truly interested in helping genuine refugees – they wouldn’t pay Turkey a few billion Euro to shut the door…. And instead of waiting for the migrants to take a perilous sea journey (all be it somtimes a very short journey from the Turkish coast to a nearby Greek island – though the shortness of this journey doesn’t make it less perilous (as the smugglers skimp on safety, to say the least!)) – Europe would send a airplanes and personnel to select whom to evacuate.

        Europe, it would seem, is mostly interested in meeting the prima facie requirements of the refugee convention and on the way importing some young strong workers.

        At the moment – the people arriving in Europe are the stronger migrants (physically and financially) and often not from Syria (>50%, debatable). The truly desperate Syrians are still in Syria, or in refugee camps in Jordan and Turkish border.

        1. “and on the way importing some young strong workers.”

          Hahaha! You assume far too much of a system. It is exactly those “young strong workers” everyone is so scared off!

          “Europe would send a airplanes and personnel to select whom to evacuate.”

          How do you envision this ‘selection process’. Should we select ‘young, strong workers’?

          1. Most of Western Europe has a demographics problem – aging population, low birthrate. Importing young, hardworking (as opposed to often lazy locals) workers is an economic imperative.

            How would you select refugees for evacuation? If your rationale is -helping- those in need, then according to -need-, which would typically not be young strong workers. Ability to adapt to a new environment would also be a criteria.

            I would say families with children, particularly young children, are those most in danger in a war-zone, and have the highest need and ability to adapt.

            Obviously any selection criteria is cruel. However the -current- selection criteria (which includes paying smugglers (and being exploited by them), dangerous sea journeys on non-seaworthy vessels, and other life threatening modes of transportation (e.g. suffocating in closed trucks in central Europe)) – is -very cruel- and really selects towards those who are able and willing to pay the significant cost and take the risks involved.

          2. @ lepxii:

            Obviously any selection criteria is cruel.

            How telling for you to use the very word the Nazis used in their brutish “culling” of the human species at the doors of the crematoria. Except you’re not culling them for immediate life or death. You’re merely using your Darwinian “selektsia” criteria for deciding who may flee to safety and who must rot in Syria & die a slow, miserable death or a quick one by bullet or bomb.

            If you think the current conditions of refugees are “cruel” then do something about it. Instead of mouthing off here & being taken for a heartless nitwit (which you are), donate money to support more humane conditions for them. Do something constructive. What you’re doing here is disgusting. But as I wrote before, with enemies like you I don’t need to do much. You should be Donald Trump’s Jewish liaison. Looking for a job? You’d do well at it…

  6. Jees. What horrible people there are in the world, smearing any answer that offers refuge to Middle-eastern immigrants by using the most irrational logic. Self-proclaimed racist xenophobes don’t deserve answers to their diatribe. They remind me of those in America who claim there are not yet enough guns in the U.S. That kind of logic cannot be changed by debate.

  7. Richard, I fear you have sunk to a new low. Are you seriously comparing contemporary immigrants with ww2 Jews? Were the immigrants forced to leave their homes and families and board trains at gunpoint? Are the immigrants being stripped now of their entire belonging, even their humanity, only to be sent to gas chambers? Did the Jews board these trains in hope of a new future in Germany or Poland?

    Honestly, your cynicism knows no limits. All this (which in some states is considered Holocaust denial) just to prove some liberal point of view? I don’t care if your ancestors were in Auschwitz or not, please don’t belittle that human tragedy for the sake of an argument.

    1. @ Leeor:

      I fear you have sunk to a new low.

      Goodness gracious, your concern deeply distresses me. Whatever shall I do?

      I’m comparing the Swiss & Danish treatment of refugees at their doors to the Nazi looting of Jewish property.

      As for today’s refugees, yes they were forced to leave their homes at gunpoint. Their children, grandparents, relatives friends were often murdered before their eyes. Hundreds of thousands have been killed in Syria. You are a heartless cruel brute.

      Are the immigrants being stripped now of their entire belonging, even their humanity, only to be sent to gas chambers?

      Whoa now buddy, that’s one step too far. I didn’t speak at all about the extermination of Jews and compare it to what is befalling the Euro immigrants. You made that jump, off a rhetorical cliff I might add. DO NOT mischaracterize my argument. If you do, you may be moderated.

      All this (which in some states is considered Holocaust denial)

      There you go. I wasn’t sure you’d commit a moderatable offense but accusing me of Holocaust denial is definitely one. You are now moderated. If you try to publish any piece of crap here like this one, I’ll ban your ass.

  8. The international press miss the reason behind the Danish law. Refugees are ranked similar to those Danes and foreigners legally in the country which qualify to receive minimal state aid called “kontanthjælp”. Which is why they get fleeced. You may not like it but Danes get the same treatment.
    https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kontanthj%C3%A6lp

    Sorry there is no english wiki-page but google-translate gives a fair translation of the Danish wiki-page.

    One of the rules is that you cannot receive any aid if you have savings above 10,000 Danish kroner pr adult. (1 US dollar = 6.86 Danish kroner) which includes your car, jewellery ect, ect. Only some pension savings & insurance payments for injuries are exempt.

    The 3F union, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagligt_F%C3%A6lles_Forbund , has a short summary:

    https://www.3f.dk/fagforening/kontanthjaelp/formue
    Here Google-translate is not as helpful but you should figure it out.

    1. @Poul: Your description differs from media reports which say that ALL migrants regardless of whether they’re applying for assistance or not, have their assets confiscated. Another difference is that the refugees assets are confiscated. It’s not just that they can’t receive aid, but that the assets are seized.

      You might want to do a better job of portraying reality next time.

      1. You are considered a state dependant automatically as you are equal to a Danish citizen in rights as a refugee. Also it’s an old law. The refugees from Yugoslavia got the same treatment. The alternative is that refugees will have to pay for everything, housing, food, costs of state employees for administration etc, etc. from Day One. Does that seem a smart policy?

        The main purpose of the small law adjustments have been to create the image of a “bad” Denmark in order to scare off refugees. Which may well work quite nicely.

      2. @ Richard
        I didn’t see Poul’s comment before commenting. He’s absolutely correct.
        I’m a Danish citizen (though I haven’t lived there for many years), I know refugees who settled in Denmark, I’ve read thourouhly about this case, also the new law proposals.
        The RT article mixes up ‘refugees’ and ‘migrants’, using the two words indiscriminately.
        To make clear: eash person has the right to keep 10.000 kroners (1.300 euros) exacly as a Danish citizen who asks for social aid so a family of two adults and two kids can keep 40.000 when they arrive as asylum seekers.
        I don’t have time now but I could find the new law and post it (in Danish though).

        1. I would also like to add that giving the employment situation for refugees any savings their would have will most likely end up in the state coffer minus the 10,000 Danish kroner per adult.

          DA – Dansk Arbejdsgiverforening – (Danish Employers Association) has an article about the employment of refugees.
          https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansk_Arbejdsgiverforening

          http://www.agenda.dk/2015/11/beskaeftigelse-for-flygtninge/

          They are looking at the percentage employed among the asylum seekers which have gotten asylum based on the year where asylum was granted. Time frame is employment after 6 months, 12 months and 18 months. Starting year is 2010. and the number of refugees granted asylum was 1,283 in 2010 & 1,520 in 2011 & 1,679 in 2012 & 2,353 in 2013 & 4,757 in 2014.

          It is not pretty numbers
          The 2010 group has an employment of 9.4% after 18 months (ca 121 persons), For 2013 it’s 3.3% after 18 months (ca 78 persons).

          Once you have been granted asylum, a refugee will be treated as a Dane which means that very, very few refugees will avoid having to pay for themselves in the first 18 months until they have run down their savings to the 10,000 DKR-level. The recent arrivals in 2015 will no doubt have even worse employment number which basically means they will be on “kontanthjælp” from day 1 after gaining asylum.

          Also we have legal rulings regarding if you’re allow to keep personal jewellery of high value and they will result in jewellery having to be sold off before you qualify for “kontanthjælp”. Fx a wedding ring valued at 1,900 kr had to be sold.

          Right now based on the latest political developments it looks like refugees will get off lighter than Danes but only until they get asylum then they will be fleeced like any other Dane.

          1. Hej Deïr Yassin

            The 10,000 DKR per adult and children is only for the proposed new law for asylum seekers.

            Once you have gotten asylum you will no longer be subject to the rules of the proposed asylum seeker law.

            Instead you will be subject to the normal kontanthjælp-rules which are tougher than the asylum seeker rules. Here children do not get a 10,000 kr. limit. However the parents can put a maximum of amount of 3,000 DKR per year into a Children’s savings account. Such an account is not included in the 10,000 DKR limit.

          2. I have to admit that I’m not à jour on the rules for kontanthjælp, but as far as I understand your comment it means you’re not allowed to put more than 10.000 kroner aside while getting this social aid. Not that social aid should be put aside but if people (in general, not specifically refugees) want to buy things like furniture or the like, they are in fact encouraged to buy on credit instead of saving up before buying.
            Anyway, this part of the new law doesn’t shock me, I know Syrians and Palestinians from Syria who flet to Denmark, really to save their lives, money wasn’t a matter at all (one of them was a very rich factory-owner back in Damascus), but waiting three years to get family union would simply break them down morally. They should have gone to Sweden …..

  9. I don’t thik RT is the best source for the topic. Anyway (and I’m not defending the Danish bill which include other restrictions far more important than the part concerning valuables): the bill does not concern ‘migrants’ but asylum seekers while in the process of asking asylum and in fact it ‘only’ puts them in the same conditions as Danish citizens and other nationals residing legally in Denmark, i.e. when you receive social aids (not to confuse with unemployment aid as the article someway does) you have to spend your own personal money before the State intervenes.

    A part from the ordinary refugee status, the prior social-democratic government of Denmark has voted a temporary refugee status to particularly Syrian refugees, and their family reunion with spouses and children still in Syria or surrounding countries will see the time limit risen from one to three years. Human rights organizations in Denmark say this is illegal according to international conventions and will probably try the new law before the Court in Strasbourg if (when) it gets through in Parliament.

  10. Switzerland gives you a receipt for what surpasses the approx. 1000 chf that they may keep. If they leave within 7 months, everything is returned back to them against the receipt. If they do not leave within 7 months, that money will be used to cover costs. Also if they change status and get a job, they have to pay 10% of their income, up to 15’000 chf. The idea behind all of this is participation.

    Its rarely applied however, in 2015 in 112 cases, many more arrived and stayed. Its unclear what criteria apply.

    Source for example here: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/schweiz-nimmt-fluechtlingen-geld-ab-a-1072143.html or here http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/schweiz/standard/Bund-nimmt-Fluechtlingen-Geld-ab/story/18221726

    Just for comparison, inhabitants need to be down to 3000 chf before getting social aid.

    Just facts, not my opinion on it…

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