While Denmark has not traditionally been a magnet for immigration, it hasnt necessarily been an unwelcome place for migrants either. Over the course of the 20th century, the country of nearly 6 million became home to refugees and immigrants from the Soviet bloc, the Balkans, the Middle East, and beyond. Today, immigrants and their descendants account for 10 percent of the total population. Denmark has also been a prominent advocate for refugees and asylum-seekers. It was one of the first countries to become a party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, and the Danish Refugee Councila humanitarian group partly funded by the Danish government and the Danish publicis actively involved in supporting refugees and internally displaced peoples around the world.
But the past year brought something different. In 2015, 21,000 people sought asylum in Denmarkup from 14,815 asylum applications in 2014 and 7,557 in 2013. (Denmark happens to be sandwiched between the two most popular European destinations for todays migrants and refugees: Germany and Sweden.) These are numbers that the Danish welfare statewhich guarantees free health care and education, among other benefits, to every citizenis struggling to handle.
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"I have never understood why it is greed to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money." Thomas Sowell