Under fire, Denmark moves ahead with bill to curb migrants'

Danish lawmakers today gave a final nod to drastic reforms curbing the rights of asylum seekers as legal and human rights experts castigated Copenhagen for turning its back on its international commitments.
The new law backed by the country's right-wing government would delay family reunifications, confiscate migrants' valuables and make already stringent permanent residency requirements even tougher.
Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen meanwhile appeared before the UN today for a review of Denmark's human rights policies.
In the Human Rights Council's first review of the country's rights record since 2011, several countries decried Denmark's tighter migration rules and voiced alarm over rising xenophobia.

In Copenhagen, the Danish speaker of parliament presented the bill today in its final form to the assembly for its second reading, and was a last chance for lawmakers to demand changes.
Just one request was presented and swiftly rejected by legislators, as a majority have already agreed to back the bill in its existing form following thorny negotiations.

"The big legislative work... Has already been done," said University of Copenhagen political science professor Kasper Moller Hansen said of today's expeditious procedure.
As a result, Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen's minority government, supported in parliament by an anti-immigration far-right party that has for 15 years dictated increasingly restrictive immigration policies, is assured of winning a January 26 parliamentary vote.

Fearing a domino effect across Europe, the UN refugee agency UNHCR has decried the bill, saying it "could fuel fear (and) xenophobia".
Once a champion of refugees' rights, Denmark would be in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the UN Refugee Convention, the UNHCR concluded in a January report.
Unfazed, Copenhagen maintains it is not able to finance more migrants nor integrate them into society.
"Denmark's immigration policy is decided in Denmark, not in Brussels," Integration Minister Inger Stojberg of Rasmussen's Venstre party has repeatedly said.
The confiscation of migrants' valuables has been the reform that has dominated international headlines.