The Danish government wants to abolish the system that requires courts to weigh the seriousness of a crime along with time lived in the country when determining whether a convicted immigrant can be deported. Under the proposed change, any foreigner sentenced to serve time in prison can be deported.
In a press release announcing the amendment, which was first proposed in 2022, immigration and integration minister Kaare Dybvad Bek pointed out that foreigners in Denmark are overrepresented in crime statistics—especially in serious crimes—and said “we must not accept that”:
The hammer must fall even harder. That is why we want to tighten the rules so that we can have even more criminal foreigners deported. Every criminal foreigner who is deported by Denmark is a victory for the rule of law and a victory for our country.
In October, figures from the Danish ministry of justice showed that perpetrators of 29.6% of the country’s violent crimes and 32.4% of rapes are from a non-Western background, despite making up only 10.6% of the population.
Under current law, the longer an immigrant has lived in Denmark, the more serious a crime has to be for deportation to be warranted, with special rules for sexual and violent crimes. Abolishing this ‘step ladder’ system means any foreigner receiving a prison sentence that is not suspended will be subject to deportation, regardless of the seriousness of the crime—and, maybe more importantly, regardless of how long the person has lived in Denmark. The only limitation to the new deportation laws would be “international obligations.”
In 2021, 1105 foreigners were sentenced to be deported from Denmark. The new law is expected to add hundreds of cases to that number, resulting in at least a two-digit number of additional deportations.
The amended law is expected to take effect in July 2025.
