One of democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’ favorite examples of the kind of beneficent high-taxing, welfare-heavy countries the U.S. should aspire to be is letting down leftists again. Not only is it not really the socialist utopia Bernie described, it’s not treating foreigners in a very “open borders” kind of way — especially not criminal foreigners.
“The Danish parliament has approved funding for a plan to hold foreign criminals on a tiny island, despite criticism from the UN and local opposition,” The Guardian reports.
The initiative, passed Thursday, will send about 100 foreign migrants who have fulfilled their jail sentences but cannot be deported because of fears of persecution upon returning to their homelands, to the seven-acre island of Lindholm, which is used as “a laboratory and crematorium by scientists researching swine flu, rabies and other contagious diseases.” The island’s experimental uses are so notorious that a ferry to the island is nicknamed “Virus.”
“A centre for people convicted of crimes ranging from murder and rape to less serious offences is to be established in 2021 and will cost 759m krone (£92m),” The Guardian reports. Funding for the “laboratory and crematorium” island relocation plan was included in the federal government’s 2019 budget approved Thursday.
The plan was passed despite opposition from the U.N. and some local politicians in part because of strong support from residents near the Jutland detention center, who say the presence of foreign criminals makes them feel unsafe. Meanwhile, residents of the area where the ferry to Lindholm departs fear that the new plan will hurt tourism, on which the area’s economy largely depends.
The plan allows residents of the island to leave during the day, but requires them to report where they are going to officials and return in the evening.
As The Guardian notes, the controversial criminal foreigner solution is part of Denmark’s “increasingly tough stance on immigration,” which follows a pattern seen in increasingly more European countries amid continued waves of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, most of whom are Muslim.
While Sanders has often cited Denmark and its extensive welfare program as a model for the U.S., as the Huffington Post explained in 2016 and 2017, the country isn’t really as socialist or successful as Sanders would have his supporters believe.
“Denmark still qualifies as a market economy today despite its high taxes and large welfare state for a number of important reasons,” writes HuffPost’s Michel Kelly-Gagnon. “As Brøns-Petersen points out, property rights are well-protected, the currency is sound, international trade is relatively free, and the regulation of business, labour, and credit is light. There are few restrictions on hiring and firing, there’s no legislated minimum wage, and taxpayers are not called upon to bail out their banks.”
It’s no surprise then that Denmark actually scores pretty highly on various economic freedom indexes. Its supposedly robust welfare state, part of the reason so many migrants have flooded in in recent years, is “more of a rickety derelict than a solid structure,” Kelly-Gagnon notes. “Successive governments have had to repeatedly reform the system, scaling back its benefits.”