Becoming a Danish permanent resident could become easier than before, as the New Danish Minister for Immigration and Integration, Kaare Dybvad Bek, has expressed his intentions to facilitate the procedure for workers.
In an interview with Politiken newspaper, Minister Bek said that people engaged in paid internships should be considered as sufficient criteria for permanent residency, saying he wants Denmark’s immigration rules to be “tight, but not crazy,” SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
More specifically, the minister said that internships and trainee programs should count toward the work requirement, indicating that applicants for permanent residency must have worked for at least three years and six months for the last four years, which means that only a six-month period of unemployment would be acceptable for such applicants.
Minister Bek, who noted that he was trying to “tidy up things that make no sense” in Denmark’s permanent residency rules, pointed out that although he wants to facilitate these rules for workers, he is not keen to restore the old education policy, which regulated education to be used to satisfy the work requirement.
“We believe that people become well integrated by being at a place of work. That could be having responsibility for senior citizens, a checkout at Netto, or laying bricks. By being around colleagues every single day, you will get a very good idea of what Danish society is generally about,” Bek said to Politiken, indicating working people should be considered first.
According to Statista data, the number of permanent residence permits granted in Denmark peaked in 2015, when 5,500 permits were granted. It then dropped to 2,200 in 2017 before slowly increasing since, reaching 4,450 by 2021. In 2021, a total of 74,769 people received some kind of residence permit in Denmark.
As per the country of origin of the immigrants living in Demark in 2022, the majority come from Poland (44,213), followed by Syria with 35,345 and Romania with 34,097.
A total of 33,487 and 32,426 immigrants came from Turkey and Germany, respectively, while Iraq and Iran counted 21,966 and 18,044 immigrants each.
Immigrants from Afghanistan, although they make up the majority of newcomers in the EU Member States together with Syrians, only 14,041 of those came to Denmark so far this year, while 15,960 came from the United Kingdom.
Immigrants from other countries, as data from Statista shows, include the following:
Like other European countries, Denmark experienced an influx of immigrants in 2015. Following the situation, the authorities imposed stricter immigration policies. In 2015, over 21,000 refugees applied for asylum in the country, whereas applications fell to 1,500 in 2020, which was also caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
