US embassy cable - 05COPENHAGEN613

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 COPENHAGEN 000613 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/NB 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/11/2015 
TAGS: PGOV, SOCI, PHUM, PINR, PTER, SCUL, DA 
SUBJECT: DENMARK STRUGGLES WITH IMMIGRATION AND INTEGRATION 
 
REF: A. COPENHAGEN 0146 
     B. COPENHAGEN 0011 
 
Classified By: Counselor for Political and Economic Affairs 
Blair Hall, Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) 
 
1. (C) Summary.  The integration of Muslims and other ethnic 
minorities remains one of the most pressing political and 
social issues in Denmark.  The government increasingly has 
focused attention on this issue, including passing 
legislation to assist newly arrived immigrants and 
introducing action plans promoting integration and diversity, 
but the results have been disappointing.  The ethnic 
immigrant community in Denmark is experiencing significantly 
higher crime rates, higher rates of unemployment and lower 
education levels than the general Danish population.  Such 
results lead critics to question the effectiveness of the 
Government's integration policies and suggest that the 
government is actually pursuing a misguided and 
self-defeating policy of assimilation.  Muslim community 
leaders believe that integration is hindered by a combination 
of ineffective government efforts, societal discrimination as 
well as the determination of some Muslims to distance 
themselves from Danish society.  Finding a successful formula 
for integration is an ongoing imperative against a backdrop 
of simmering frustration among Denmark's estimated 180,000 
Muslims.  End Summary. 
 
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Government Integration Policies 
------------------------------- 
 
2.  (U) Over the past several years the Danish government 
actively has promoted integration through legislation and 
action plans.  Its efforts have produced only mixed results. 
The current integration laws were enacted in 1999 to assist 
newly arrived immigrants, refugees, and accepted asylum 
seekers.  This legislation directs municipalities to enroll 
newly arrived immigrants into a three-year introduction 
program which consists of language training, job 
training/placement, short term education and housing 
assistance.  The legislation contains financial incentives to 
municipalities for each individual who becomes gainfully 
employed for at least six months, and for successful 
completion of a Danish language program. 
 
3.  (U) The Government is also tracking the effectiveness of 
its integration laws.  In March 2005, the Ministry of 
Integration published a report evaluating the efforts of 
Denmark's municipalities to implement Denmark's integration 
laws from 1999-2003.  The report indicated that 
municipalities made progress during the first four years 
since the law was enacted, but also found that not all 
aspects of the integration law uniformly are being met. 
Newly appointed Minister of Refugee, Immigration and 
Integration Affairs Rikke Hvilshj urged local politicians 
and public sector managers to make full implementation of the 
integration law a top priority. 
 
4.  (U) In 2003, the Government introduced the Action Plan to 
Promote Equal Treatment and Diversity and to Combat Racism. 
This Action Plan focuses on increasing knowledge about 
discrimination and racism in Denmark, proposes initiatives to 
increase access for ethnic and other minorities into higher 
education programs and the labor market, and seeks increased 
tolerance of diversity through public debate and dialogue. 
The Government also initiated an Action Plan for 2003-2005 on 
Forced, Quasi-Forced, and Arranged Marriages.  The Action 
Plan on Forced Marriages contains initiatives aimed not only 
at preventing forced marriages but also improving integration 
and gender equality, and promoting the values of free choice 
and personal freedom.  In 2003, the Government, through a 
joint effort by the Ministries of Integration, Employment, 
Social Affairs and Gender Equality, Culture, and Education, 
published its Vision and Strategies for Improved Integration. 
 The report concluded that the main goals of integration 
policy for the near future should be: a coherent and open 
democratic society, access for minorities to education and 
training, and access to the labor market. 
 
5. (C) The Government reaffirmed its commitment to pursuing 
and promoting its integration policies during the national 
election campaign in February.  The coalition center right 
Government (successfully reelected to a four-year term) 
attempted to steer voters away from the issue of immigration 
by claiming that it had delivered on its campaign promise in 
2001 to tighten immigration laws and asylum policy.  Indeed, 
Denmark enacted some of Europe's strictest immigration laws 
in 2002.  Instead, the government parties focused on 
promoting its new integration policies intended to address 
the disproportionately high crime rate and unemployment among 
ethnic minorities.  For example, the government vowed to 
place 25,000 ethnic minorities into the work force by 2010. 
Post-election, the government unveiled a proposal in which 
ethnic minorities with limited language and education skills 
hired by the state could be paid 80% of the prevailing 
minimum wage, and be directed to devote 20%  of their time 
(unpaid) to job training and improving their general 
qualifications. 
 
----------------------------- 
Melting Pot or Assembly Line? 
----------------------------- 
 
6.  (C) Despite all of the Government efforts, integration 
remains a mounting challenge for Danish institutions and 
society.  Frequent reports by the media highlight 
disproportionately high crime rates, unemployment, and school 
drop-out rates.  For example, according to a Danish study 
completed in December 2004, criminal activity is 43 percent 
higher for non-Western background males than the average for 
all males in the population.  In Copenhagen 82 percent of 
youths arraigned in court in 2004 were members of ethnic 
minority groups.  According to Denmark's National Statistic 
authority, the national unemployment in Denmark in 2004 was 
6.4 %, while the rate for ethnic minorities was 19.1%.  The 
2004 annual report by the Ministry of Refugees, Immigrants 
and Integration on immigrants documented that the overall 
enrollment rate among 16-19 year olds in Denmark in either 
secondary education or vocational training is 74%, but among 
ethnic minorities the enrollment rate is only 49%. 
Integration Minister Hvilshj acknowledged in a recent lunch 
meeting at the Embassy that one of the biggest challenges 
facing the Government is stopping the flow of educated 
immigrants from leaving Denmark for countries such as the 
U.S., UK and Canada.  The remaining population of immigrants 
tends to be less educated and has a more difficult time with 
the integration process. 
 
7.  (C) Some critics of the Government's integration policies 
suggest that their ineffectiveness is due to policies geared 
towards assimilation rather than integration.  Leaders of the 
Muslim community have claimed in meetings with poloffs that 
there is no room for, and more importantly no political will 
to develop, cultural pluralism in Denmark.  Tellingly, a 
senior advisor to Integration Minister Hvilshj commented 
during the recent lunch meeting at the Embassy that "we want 
them (immigrants) to think like Danes."  Despite being born 
in Denmark, the children and even grandchildren of immigrants 
are widely referred to as "New Danes."  Muslim community 
leaders lament that their communities are confronted with the 
widespread assumptions that integration is achieved only via 
complete assimilation and that cultural pluralism is 
undesirable in a small country like Denmark.  Sensationalist 
Danish media coverage of Denmark's Muslim minorities only 
aggravates the cultural divide.  Muslim leaders further state 
that assimilation policies are doomed to failure and will 
result in growing dissatisfaction and resentment between 
"New" and "Old" Danes. 
 
----------------------------------------- 
Difficulties with the Integration Process 
----------------------------------------- 
 
8. (C) The Muslim community leaders with whom emboffs have 
met invariably complain that the integration process here is 
particularly difficult for Muslims.  They generally dismiss 
as superficial the government's action plans aimed at 
promoting integration into Danish society.  Sukru Ertosun, 
Chairman of the Integration Ministry's Council for Ethnic 
Minorities told us that the government has consistently 
ignored the advice of his 14-member council while tightening 
Danish immigration law and asylum policy.  Our Muslim 
contacts generally characterize the Prime Minister's 
much-publicized November 30, 2004, lunch with representatives 
of immigrant communities as a public display of tolerance 
that lacked substantive follow-up after the cameras were 
turned off.  Additionally, Muslim community leaders claim 
that the government is steering NGO funding aimed at 
improving integration toward "pet" issues like combating 
forced marriages at the expense of programs aimed at 
combating discrimination or promoting cultural diversity. 
 
9. (SBU) Embassy's Muslim contacts also note that integration 
is hindered by the subtle discrimination Muslims face on a 
daily basis.  While all agree that the basic needs of Muslims 
are ensured by the generous cradle-to-grave Danish welfare 
state, subtle discrimination prevents Muslims in Denmark from 
"getting ahead."  Pressed for details, these contacts 
highlight difficulties community members have in finding 
desirable housing or employment if they speak accented Danish 
or have a Middle Eastern last name.  Where some Danish 
politicians see self-created ghettos, our Muslims contacts 
counter that ethnically dominated neighborhoods offer the 
most accessible housing opportunities.  Referring to job 
discrimination, one contact joked that Copenhagen has the 
best educated taxi drivers in the world. 
 
10. (SBU) Other examples of discrimination cited by our 
Muslim interlocutors: 
-- The Islamic Faith Society has been trying to secure 
permission to found a Muslim cemetery in Copenhagen for the 
last several years and only now appears to have won a green 
light. 
-- The Copenhagen Islamic Culture Center complains that it 
was denied permission to build a mosque on existing Culture 
Center property (but was allowed to renovate its more 
discrete library for prayer services). 
-- The Danish media recently reported that ethnic minorities 
were routinely being denied entry into several popular 
Copenhagen nightclubs. 
-- Vandals destroyed about 50 gravestones with Arabic writing 
at a Copenhagen cemetery in mid-January; similar vandalism 
took place at the same cemetery in 2001. 
 
11. (C) Muslim community leaders also privately concede that 
many Muslims share responsibility for integration problems. 
For example, Copenhagen City Council member Hamid El Mousti 
cites ethnic minorities' widespread failure to learn Danish 
well as the key factor hindering their job prospects and 
enhancing their reliance on Denmark's generous welfare 
benefits.  He and other Muslim leaders lament ethnic 
minorities' disproportionately high crime rate.  A number of 
our contacts note that many immigrant parents fail to 
encourage their children to complete their education and that 
the high dropout rate among Muslim youths marginalizes them 
further from the highly competitive Danish job market. 
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Comment 
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12. (C) The Danish government so far has been more successful 
in restricting immigration than it has in promoting real 
integration among Denmark's diverse ethnic minority 
communities, particularly Muslims.  Although the Danish 
nation has experienced immigration from Muslim regions for 
more than thirty years, by and large the concept of cultural 
pluralism is not one ascribed to by most Danes.  Indeed, even 
though toleration, respect and open-mindedness can be said to 
be core Danish values, there also is a stubborn insistence on 
traditional form and custom.  New arrivals, and even their 
children born in Denmark, who for whatever reason do not 
conform to cultural expectations are denigrated with the 
ultimate put down: "not Danish."  In the politically charged 
environment that exists today, prospects for meaningful 
progress do not appear very encouraging.  More likely, the 
cultural chasm between the largely homogeneous Danish 
population and the nearly four percent of the population who 
immigrated to Denmark is likely to remain, if not grow.  That 
divide is more than just a political lightning rod for a 
seemingly perpetual national debate on Danish identity.  The 
related social problems of unemployment, lack of education, 
and crime pose significant challenges to the Danish welfare 
state and test traditional Danish tolerance.  Moreover, 
festering alienation from Danish society among Muslim youth 
provides a potential recruiting ground for religious 
extremists (Septel).  Many Danes -- policymakers and ordinary 
citizens alike -- recognize that something has to be done. 
They just don't know what. 
Light