Denmark Aims a Wrecking Ball at 'Non-Western' Neighborhoods

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20231026043045&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;10&#x2F;26&#x2F;world&#x2F;europe&#x2F;denmark-housing.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20231026043045&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytim...</a>

&gt; &quot;The law mandates that in neighborhoods where at least half of the population is of non-Western origin or descent, and where at least two of the following characteristics exist — low income, low education, high unemployment or a high percentage of residents who have had criminal convictions — the share of social housing needs to be reduced to no more than 40 percent by 2030&quot;<p>A lot of countries have had problems with putting all the social housing in one place and then ignoring it while conditions worsen. Especially in big badly designed tower blocks.<p>But there&#x27;s no need to tie it to immigration status, and there&#x27;s especially no need to tie it to ethnicity! If there really is a crime problem in a place, then let that speak for itself. And of course the creation and suppression of ghettoes has a <i>terrible</i> history in Europe.<p>(Interestingly, Denmark managed to evacuate 90% of Danish Jews to neutral Sweden during WW2, far higher than other occupied countries)

I remember at university reading that some local governments avoided creating housing for those on benefits, instead setting aside a percentage of housing blocks for those persons, so that they are integrated with persons who were not on benefits. IIRC the thinking was that concentration of poverty and those in poverty leads to more poverty, but integration showed improved results.

“The blend of people from different layers of society is getting higher,” Thomas Monberg, a member of Parliament and the Social Democrats’ spokesman for housing, said in an email response to questions. He said the government acted because it could not afford to “wait until people are killing each other in gang wars.”<p>Notable things here. It&#x27;s considered an experiment by the Danish, which shows unusual humility, since it might fail. It is a Social Democrat experiment, which is surprising because I imagine the knee-jerk reaction from the American left will be to descry forcing &quot;non-white&quot; people to do anything against their will. The policy&#x27;s stated purpose is to avoid much worse outcome down the line. What data showed them that gang wars were coming? And who&#x2F; can we use as a control group to see if the Danish government has done the right thing? It brings up an interesting question about assimilation and how much can be or should be demanded of immigrants by the host nation.

This is not new. It has been done many times in Denmark, and it works.

I like it especially if it is a genuine attempt at integration and not a way to force poor immigrants out of desirable real estate.

Important context that the article is light on is that Denmark (and Sweden, etc. etc.) all have immigrant populations that are considerably more violent than the rest of the population, sometime more than 10x.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Immigration_to_Denmark#&#x2F;media&#x2F;File:Denmark_migrant_crime_in_2018.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Immigration_to_Denmark#&#x2F;media&#x2F;...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;576081&#x2F;number-of-sexual-crimes-in-denmark&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;576081&#x2F;number-of-sexual-...</a>

If Americans emigrated in droves to Denmark they would also fail to integrate, (although they would face less racism from the locals) and they will also prefer to socialize with their own, retain their own American customs and cultural identity and fail to learn Danish. But all of this is irrelevant. Failing to integrate, by this measure does not lead one directly towards the criminal underworld. There are a few steps in between that are being ignored, and this &quot;failed integration&quot; is being used as a red herring.

It’s a shame that more Western leaders haven’t understood that we are simply trustees of the nations and cultures that our ancestors created for our descendants.

Why go through all this effort and expense? Just send them home if they won&#x27;t assimilate.

Maybe the non western folks should not have been let in to begin with?

That sounds like an attempt to erase non-government-approved culture to me.

Very good. Look at Sweden nowadays. Trying to integrate people that came to &quot;take over&quot; as opposed to be integrated is never going to work.<p>&gt; At 4%, male migrants aged 15–64 with non-Western backgrounds had twice the conviction rate against the Danish Penal Code in 2018, compared to 2% for Danish men. In a given year, about 13% of all male descendants of non-Western migrants aged 17–24 are convicted against the penal code.[1]<p>&gt; In November 2018, the government announced plans to house failed asylum claimants, criminal foreigners who could not be deported and foreign fighters in the Islamic State on Lindholm (Stege Bugt), an island no permanent residents.[92][93] The scheme was approved by Danish parliament 19 December 2018. The plan was opposed by council leaders in Vordingsborg municipality and merchants in Kalvehave, where the ferry to Lindholm has its port.[1]<p>They are obviously trying to backtrack<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Immigration_and_crime" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Immigration_and_crime</a>

I’m about as far left as they come, but things like this make me proud to be an American, and even more so live in a state with a massive number of immigrants, including from majority Muslim countries, and the world’s 5th largest economy. The bigotry in Europe is just psychotic. You sometimes get a real picture into why they murdered each other for centuries over speaking minor variations of each others languages.