Denmark announced a policy for rejected immigrants who are not able to return to their home countries: banishment on a remote island. The Danish government…
Denmark announced a policy for rejected immigrants who are not able to return to their home countries: banishment on a remote island.
The Danish government — which is currently led a center-right party — announced it will send as many as 100 immigrants to Lindholm Island, a small, 17-acre island in the Baltic Sea. The arrangements are intended for rejected asylum seekers who can’t be sent back — foreigners with a criminal background and whose home countries won’t accept them, according to The New York Times.
The choice of Lindolm Island is notable in that it a sparsely populated area which has been historically used for laboratories and animal disease research. In fact, one of the two ferries that will be shipping the migrants is named “the Virus.”
“They are unwanted in Denmark, and they will feel that,” Inger Stojberg, the country’s immigration minister, wrote in a Facebook post Friday.
The decision to house undesirable immigrants on Lindholm Island comes after a fiscal compromise. While the populist Danish People’s Party is not officially part of the country’s governing coalition, the conservative government typically depends on their votes for legislation.
