Denmark plans to tighten travel restrictions for refugees: No holidays in home countries

Source: Schengen Visa info

Denmark’s Ministry of Immigration and Integration has unfolded new plans to further tighten the regulations for refugees planning to travel for holidays to their home countries, banning them from making such holidays even after they have resided in Denmark for ten years.

Refugees who have been in Denmark for a period of ten years are allowed to go on holiday in their home countries from which they otherwise hold protection, based on the Aliens Act, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.

But Denmark’s Immigration and Integration Minister Karee Dybvad Bek said that he plans to change this rule. The idea of the Minister means that refugees in the future risk losing their residence permit due to a holiday trip to their home countries, even though they have resided in Denmark for ten years.

If the immigration authorities find out that refugees have been on holiday in their home countries, the Danish Immigration Service will assess whether there is a basis for withdrawing the asylum residence permit or not.

Authorities in Denmark have stressed that if a refugee holds a resident permit on another basis, the person concerned will be eligible to return to the home country without being obliged to have any effect on the residence permit.

Minister Kaare Dybvad Bek said that he does not believe that a refugee who has asylum in the Nordic country should be eligible to travel to his home country on holiday, not even after ten years.

“It cannot be right for you to live in Denmark with access to the entire welfare society with an asylum residence permit, because you are persecuted in your home country, but then at the same time spend your summer vacation traveling back to your home country and taking a vacation,” he stressed.

He noted that the Ministry is not making this change in the law after they have seen a large number of examples where refugees have gone on holiday in their home countries, stressing that they are making such changes for reasons of principle.

“For me, the 10-year rule does not make sense, and therefore we want to change the law,” the Minister noted.

According to the statement of the Ministry, the bill is also expected to have several other new measures, stressing that the government of Denmark will clarify the intention of the residence requirement in the law for displaced people from Ukraine.

In May this year, Denmark also applied new changes to the country’s citizenship regulations, in spite of having some of the strictest rules in the world when it comes to naturalization requirements.