{"id":4496,"date":"2025-09-27T03:19:38","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T03:19:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/?p=4496"},"modified":"2025-09-27T03:19:38","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T03:19:38","slug":"can-the-left-learn-anything-from-denmarks-social-democrats-migration-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/?p=4496","title":{"rendered":"Can the left learn anything from Denmark’s Social Democrats’ migration policy?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Cosmopitan
Despite being more strict about migration than Canada, Denmark is still a diverse, cosmopolitan country. This photograph shows newlyweds in Copenhagen: Heinner Valenzuela from Colombia and Magdalena Kujawinska from Poland. Photo by James Brooks \/AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Unlike most social-democratic parties, Denmark\u2019s has been winning elections since 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That\u2019s because the Nordic country\u2019s centre-left party has stayed true to its working-class roots. Rather than allowing itself to be run by what French economist Thomas Piketty calls \u201cthe Brahmin left\u201d \u2014 by which he means educated city elites \u2014 Denmark\u2019s Social Democrats have been taking blue-collar workers seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The country has had a long tradition of valuing work done by the hands, including with sophisticated trade apprentice programs that ensure wages are often similar to university-trained professionals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Denmark\u2019s Social Democratic Party Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen also recognizes blue-collar workers have reason to worry about high migration levels. Countries that bring in many workers from offshore tend to experience a reduction in wages, studies show. Pressure also rises on health care, housing costs and schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Denmark\u2019s PM, who herself has working-class origins, decided a decade ago that a progressive party has to restrict migration to retain an egalitarian, cohesive welfare state. To that end, Denmark\u2019s left-wing government has been lowering immigration levels and deporting people who enter illegally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The New York Times recently ran a sympathetic seven-page feature article about Denmark, asking: \u201cAround the world, progressive parties have come to see tight immigration restrictions as unnecessary, even cruel. What if they\u2019re actually the only way for progressive governance to flourish?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Given the political culture of North America, once the The Times poses such a question, it becomes OK to discuss it in centre-left circles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In Canada, people like Simon Fraser University\u2019s Sanjay Jeram,<\/a> the University of B.C.\u2019s David Green and others have for years called for just such a \u201chealthy debate\u201d of migration policy, but with limited success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Meanwhile, only a few North American centre-left politicians \u2014 like Sen. Bernie Sanders or B.C. Premier David Eby \u2014 have gone out on a progressive limb to raise some migration policy downsides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Not so the PM of Denmark: \u201cThere is a price to pay when too many people enter your society,\u201d Frederiksen told The Times. \u201cThose who pay the highest price of this, it\u2019s the working or lower class in the society. It is not \u2014 let me be totally direct \u2014 it\u2019s not the elite people. It\u2019s not those of us with good salaries, good jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tightening borders is just one way Denmark\u2019s centre-left retains the loyalty of the rank-and-file. Others include new legislation to enable blue-collar workers to retire earlier than professionals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Denmark also stops landlords from raising rents for five years after purchasing residential apartments. And it provides free education through university, including a monthly stipend of about Cdn$1,200.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Such generous benefits, says Frederiksen, can\u2019t be offered if borders are too open \u2014 if the population balloons without a sufficient tax and business base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Despite Denmark\u2019s rigour on migration, it\u2019s worth countering impressions that it isn\u2019t cosmopolitan. Thirteen per cent of residents are foreign-born. In Copenhagen, that rises to 16 per cent. The nation continues to welcome newcomers, including refugees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen believes restrictions on migration are necessary for progressive societies to flourish. Photo by PHILIP DAVALI \/Ritzau Scanpix\/AFP via Getty Ima<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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While Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has talked about how Canada should have \u201cnegative growth\u201d in population, the Liberals\u2019 Mark Carney became PM in April in part because he vowed to fight Trump on tariffs, but also because he pledged to moderately lower migration rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In contrast, the social-democratic NDP, under Jagmeet Singh, was more enthusiastic than Trudeau about mass migration. Singh was ready to go further to open borders than Trudeau had been, particularly by advocating bringing in more parents and grandparents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A rare glimmer in Canada of left-wing concern about migration came this month, when Eby called for a national \u201cserious and adult conversation\u201d<\/a> on migration levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Eby connected \u201cvery high\u201d youth unemployment, chronically low wages and overburdened social services, including food banks, to record numbers of temporary foreign workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Denmark\u2019s Social Democratic Party, which has just won elections against the populist right, has brought in policies that have made obtaining citizenship more difficult, including requiring applicants to speak conversational Danish, and has changed asylum rules so a temporary crisis in another country is no longer grounds for a permanent stay in Denmark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Canadian thinkers like Queen\u2019s University\u2019s Will Kymlika and Keith Banting said more than seven years ago that it\u2019s not possible to have both a welfare society and wide-open borders. They called it the \u201cprogressive\u2019s dilemma.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Princeton economist Angus Deaton, a Nobel laureate, says the trouble with North America\u2019s current centre-left is it\u2019s dominated by academics, urban lawyers and public-sector managers, rather than, as it was decades ago, by labour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That means the leadership, Deaton says, often doesn\u2019t recognize how high migration policy can exacerbate economic inequality: It has a way of benefiting the affluent, while poor and working-class people, including recent immigrants, bear the burden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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While some accuse Denmark\u2019s Social Democratic Party of getting tough on migration in a cynical effort to draw votes from the right, even the party\u2019s critics acknowledge the shift is authentic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018\u2018For them, it\u2019s not just a strategy,\u2019\u2019 a member of a rival left-wing Danish party told The Times. \u2018\u2018They mean it.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unlike most social-democratic parties, Denmark\u2019s has been winning elections since 2019. That\u2019s because the Nordic country\u2019s centre-left party has stayed true to its working-class roots. Rather than allowing itself to be run by what French economist Thomas Piketty calls \u201cthe Brahmin left\u201d \u2014 by which he means educated city elites \u2014 Denmark\u2019s Social Democrats have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3139,3137,3138,3136],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4496"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4497,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4496\/revisions\/4497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}