[BRIEF NOTE] Marriage Rights in Denmark

[rfmcdonald]

Jeffrey Fleishman's September 2004 Los Angeles Times article "Danes' growing hostility to mixed-race couples", republished in the San Francisco Chronicle, takes a look at the plight of binational couples in Denmark.

[Christina] Reves, a Dane, is married to Walid Badawi, an Egyptian. The couple -- and more than 1,200 like them -- will tell you that love knows no bounds until it encounters Danish immigration laws. This nation is increasingly anti- foreigner, and its strict marriage regulations are sending hundreds of culturally mixed couples into exile each year.

"I cross what is known as 'Love Bridge' every night to Sweden, and we joke that we're love's refugees," said Reves, who is training in Copenhagen to be a real estate agent.

"I feel betrayed and sad. It's not just the rightist politicians. It's the Danish people, too. We've become very small-minded. We're such a rich country, but those of us who married foreigners can't share it with our spouses."

Suspicion of immigrants has helped propel the rise of the right-wing Danish People's Party, which won 12 percent of the vote in the last federal election and is a key member of the coalition government. The party's platform, according to its Web site, is clear: "Denmark belongs to the Danes and its citizens must be able to live in a secure community ... developing only along the lines of Danish culture."

The European Council in July criticized Denmark's legislation on immigrants as a threat to human rights. The laws are a complicated mix of financial, housing, age and national loyalty requirements that critics say deter mixed marriages.

One of the most contentious provisions holds that both partners be at least 24 years old.

Rightist politicians say the legislation prevents poor immigrants from overrunning the welfare system and protects Muslim girls from forced marriages, which Integration Minister Bertel Haarder has described as an "offense" to freedom. Immigrants and asylum-seekers make up about 8 percent of Denmark's population of 5.3 million. Three percent of the population is Muslim, and the government has imposed some of Europe's toughest restrictions on Islamic clerics.

The human rights group Marriage Without Borders is active in Denmark and Sweden, and many couples are trying to outmaneuver Danish laws. A Dane living in Sweden for two years is eligible for Swedish citizenship. With a Swedish passport, the native Dane can return to Denmark with his or her foreign spouse under the protection of European Union regulations.

"When you turn on the news in Denmark, all they talk about is democracy," said Mohssine Boudal, a Moroccan married to a Dane and living in Sweden. "But look at our situation. We can't live in Denmark. That's not democratic at all. It's a contradiction."

As early as 2002, the Øresund Bridge connecting the Danish capital of Copenhagen with Sweden's third-largest city of Malmö took on a vital role for these mixed-nationality couples, allowing the Danish members of these marriages to commute to their homeland while living with their spouses in the more welcoming confines of Sweden. The bridge's website claims that the balance of migration in the Øresund Region created by the bridge is balanced decidedly in Sweden's favour, claiming that lower property prices on the Swedish side are a factor. Multinational consortia aren't prone to make politically controversial claims about one of their parent states, incidentally.

Myself, I'd be interested in comparing Denmark and Sweden in a generation's time. It's never a good thing when the state is brought in to regulate the permissibility of the existence of anyone's intimate relationships, certainly not for the parties involved. That Denmark was the first country in the world to establish same-sex civil unions only heightens the sad, sad irony.