Fjordman: Denmark: Criminal immigrants hang around for years

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Denmark: Criminal immigrants hang around for years

Criminal immigrants hang around for years

There is a small group of hard core criminal immigrants refusing to leave Denmark and because the authorities do not know where they come from, they can't send them back. Some 39 criminals, accused of murder, arson and other serious offences are currently in Sandholm, the immigrants centre in North Sealand, their prison sentences having expired and due for deportation. Another 20 are serving prison sentences. But they refuse to say where they come from and it is a huge task for the police to find out when there are no papers on the individuals. They get only board and lodging at Sandholm, are free to move around and need only report to the police once a week.

Foreign crooks are high on the menu

Foreigners who commit three criminal offences are to be deported from Denmark, if Liberal candidate Søren Pind becomes mayor of Copenhagen. Pind, who currently serves as head of the city’s construction and technical committee, said immigrant criminality should be the main focus of the municipal elections in November, daily newspaper Politiken reported. Pind said his election campaign proposal included a stricter line on ethnic ghettoes, foreign criminals, and immigrants who passively accepted benefit cheques without bothering to look for a job. ‘We must take action against an increasing lack of safety in Copenhagen, and what I like to refer to as the clammy palms people get when they walk the streets without feeling safe. The only thing that works is a straightforward zero-tolerance policy,’ Pind said. He suggested a ‘three strikes and you’re out’, a strategy based on a US model, where offenders in many places get long prison sentences after their third run-in with criminal law. In Pind’s version, foreign citizens should be deported after their third offence. Upon a foreigner’s second offence, the Liberal Party wants his social benefits cut. If he is a minor, the family will suffer the consequences and see their benefit cheques cut. Both Social Democratic candidate Ritt Bjerregaard and Social Liberal Klaus Bondam denounced Pind’s proposal. Bondam called it an expression of a ‘full-blast sheriff mentality’, while Bjerregaard said it was xenophobic.