Denmark: Handling of cousin marriages to be changed

The handling of requests for family reunification from cousin-spouses by the Danish Immigration authority has been lacking.  The authority will change its current procedure after courts have overturned the authority's rejections in eight out of nine cases for spouses from Turkey, Pakistan and Iraq, among others, reports Politiken newspaper.

The authority is currently facing harsh criticism for not giving proper guidance to those seeking family reunification.

Changing the procedure means that authorities will take more time to interview the applicants in order to better decide whether it's a forced marriage.  Until now cousin couples seeking family reunification in Denmark were almost certain to be denied, since according to the law cousin marriages are assumed to be forced marriages.

The disputed 'assumption regulations' was introduced in 2004 and designed all cousin marriages as forced marriages unless there were special grounds to the contrary.

the number of rejections of family reunification for reasons of forced marriage exploded from 7 in 2004 to 95 in 2007.

Source: DR (Danish)

See also: Denmark: Cousin-marriages not necessarily coerced

4 comments:

GW said...

Just what Denmark needs, a greater liberalization of its laws to allow more Muslim immigration - and this of a particularly problematic sort, both culturally and from the standpoint of increased probability of birth defects. Good post. Linked. http://wolfhowling.blogspot.com/2008/08/jihad-counter-terrorism-linkfest.html

Anonymous said...

OUTLAW INCEST ALREADY! And stop recognizing incestuous and polygamous marriages. Accepting child marriage and letting husbands rape their wives is next. ANd Denmark has socialized medicine. It's not only unethical, it's economically unsound. Even if people want to marry their cousins that does not make it acceptable. Getting married before 30 isn't even acceptable if you ask me, let alone arranged marriages. Incest causes evolution to work in reverse, and arranged marriages preclude natural selection. It's just awful no matter how you slice it.

Esther said...

Getting married before 30 isn't even acceptable if you ask me

Actually European authorities are now trying to convince women to have children at a younger age, when they're more fertile.

Anonymous said...

Those authorities need to read 'Freakonomics' and find out what happens to places where women have babies too young. They turn into Alabama. I realize they're trying to up the birthrates, which is a noble cause, but there's nothing wrong with waiting until 30 to start a family. I would not have good teeth and a college education if my parents hadn't waited to have me until they were out of grad school and settled in their careers. Plus medicine has nearly overcome the decreased-fertility-due-to-age thing. It's true that test tube babies don't come cheap, though.