By Blue Rose on Wednesday, 3 of August , 2011 at 10:23 pm
On July 1 the government made it even more expensive and difficult for couples with one Dane and one non-EU partner to live together in Denmark.
Among other changes, the fee for the famously tough family reunification application was raised to 7,775 kroner – a 30 percent hike – while the compulsory four-year cash guarantee was raised from 63,000 to 100,000 kroner.
Information newspaper calculated that all told the cost of family reunification – once fees, tests, and cash securities are tallied – is now 168,131 kroner per couple, plus or minus a krone.
For young international couples, it is even tougher to stay together in Denmark, because current family reunification rules also stipulate that both partners must be at least 24 years old.
Katrine Villumsen and Jessie Villarreal are one young, international couple who have had to come up with creative solutions to be able to stay together.
Villumsen, a journalism student from the Funen town of Faaborg, was taking a year abroad to study in Santa Barbara, California, when she met Villarreal, a young opera singer from Riverside, California. They were both just 19.
They fell in love and after six months moved in together. In their second year together, they began thinking about a more permanent solution for their residency issues as an international couple. To complicate matters, marriage was not a solution for the lesbian couple, as US immigration laws do not recognise same-sex relationships.
“I think it would be easier for a Somalian to immigrate to the US than to Denmark, but in our case, it’s easier for me to immigrate to Denmark than for Katrine to immigrate to the US,” Villarreal told The Copenhagen Post.
So two years ago the couple decided they had a better future in Denmark, where their relationship is at least recognised by law, and where – someday when they are old enough – they can apply for family reunification as a couple.
“My desire to live in Denmark is greater than my desire to live in the US and I feel safer here. Danish people are more apathetic about being gay,” Villarreal said. “In the US people either love you or hate you for being gay.”
As both women were just 21 years old in 2009 – still too young to apply for family reunification – it was now Villarreal’s turn to use a student visa to stay with her partner.
With foreign student tuition and no eligibility for the national student stipend, the decision came at a high cost. Since both are still students, they don’t earn much. But together they managed to get by, working part-time, scrimping, saving and taking out loans.
But last month when Villarreal got a tuition bill of 100,000 kroner for her final year of studies at The Royal Academy of Music – with 50,000 kroner due in just two weeks and 50,000 more in September, they had no idea what to do.
Their life together depended upon her student visa. If she could not pay, she would have to leave the country. Without any expectation of success she decided to post a blog asking for loans or donations to raise the money.
“[It was] a desperate plea. I felt pathetic writing it. But the responses were amazing.” Villarreal said.
Some 14,000 kroner in donations from strangers and friends poured in. Villarreal’s colleagues at The Cockney Pub in Århus arranged two “Save Jessie’s Arse” concerts that raised another 4,000 kroner. Another colleague she barely knew offered her a no-questions-asked, interest-free loan of 20,000 kroner.
An even bigger loan of 50,000 kroner was offered by an international couple who knew first-hand the difficulties of getting family reunification in Denmark: Katrine’s Danish cousin and his Polish wife. They met as students in Norway and had to borrow money from his parents for their family reunification. Years later they were in the position to pass along the favour to a younger international pair struggling with immigration issues.
Villarreal and Villumsen both said they could not help but contrast the outpouring of generosity and trust from strangers and acquaintances eager to help with the tone of suspicion and distrust for immigrants in the political debate and family reunification rules.
“There must be somebody supporting all these immigration rules, but it’s not the people we’re surrounded by,” Villumsen said.
The governing Liberal Party’s immigration spokesperson Karsten Lauritzen defended the tougher immigration rules, including the higher costs and so-called ‘points system’ by which foreign partners earn ‘points’ to qualify to stay in Denmark through university degrees and other benchmarks.
“When we get better applicants, we also bring in people who are better prepared to become integrated,” Lauritzen told Politiken newspaper earlier this month.
Villumsen sees things a different way.
“In Denmark we have Jante Law, where everyone is supposed to be equal and nobody is better than anybody else,” she said. “But now it’s turning into the situation where if you have a better education, then you get to go first in line. We need people doing all types of work and it shouldn’t matter if you come from India, the US, or wherever.”
“I just think it’s a shame that you can’t be with the person you love in the country you come from, just because it comes down to nationality,” she added.
When Villarreal finishes her Bachelor’s degree next year she will lose her student visa and the couple’s immigration worries will start all over again. But by then, they both will be 24 years old and will have lived together in Denmark for three years. They plan to form a civil union in September.
Then they will be eligible to apply for family reunification – as long as they can put 100,000 kroner in the bank.
Source: ScandAsia.com
By Blue Rose on Saturday, 5 of March , 2011 at 6:00 am
In Numbeo’s survey (http://www.numbeo.com/), New York is used as the base city for the index and scores 100 points, with all cities compared against New York and currency movements measured against the US Dollar and EURO. Sydney (Australia) scored 113.14 points, making it nearly three times as costly as La Paz (Bolivia) with an index score of 39.00.
At the beginning of 2011, the most expensive cities (excluding rent) are:
- Oslo, Norway (CPI 149.26)
- Stavanger, Norway (145.65)
- Zurich, Switzerland (143.93)
- Geneva, Switzerland (143.71)
- Bergen, Norway (142.46)
- Basel, Switzerland (141.12)
- Lausanne, Switzerland (136.41)
- Lucerne, Switzerland (133.04)
- Perth, Australia (130.15)
- Copenhagen, Denmark (123.87)
The least expensive cities in 2011 are Indian cities: Coimbatore, Pune, Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad, followed by Islamabad and Karachi in Pakistan.
Rent is the most expensive in New York, followed by San Francisco (USA), Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) and Lucerne (Switzerland).
Cities with the lowest rent are Changchun (China) and Karachi (Pakistan).
On the country level, the most expensive countries in 2011 are Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Australia, Ireland and the Netherlands.
The least expensive countries in 2011 are India, Pakistan, Bolivia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand and Macedonia.
By Blue Rose on Sunday, 29 of August , 2010 at 1:48 pm
Ariana Ariz Carstensen awaits a 29-year-old woman from the Philippines at Bellevue Beach north of Copenhagen, but the appointment gets cancelled.
The 29 year old, who works as an au pair in a Danish family, says she has to babysit for the family and can’t make it.
Carstensen met her at the beach last week, when the woman contacted her to ask for help.
The woman said, she had worked for three weeks without a day off. Her workdays stretch from early morning to late evening, and she has no time off in the middle of the day either.
This is against the regulations for au pairs in Denmark, in which the young women are only allowed to work for five hours a day, six days a week, unless they get economical compensation.
Carstensen is used to hearing these kinds of stories. Every Sunday, she attends mass at the Pentecostal Church on Drejevej at Nørrebro, where she councils aupairs from the Philippines. Carstensen herself came to Denmark fromthe Philippines as a child in 1986, because her mother had married aDanish man. She speaks perfect Danish, English and two Philippinedialects.
One of the very first au pairs she spoke to, told her thatshe worked 24-7 and had never had a day off. She outlined some of herduties, which included polishing windows on the second floor of abuilding and cleaning the gutter.
Carstensen realized that the womanwas being abused, and wrote to the Danish Immigration Service.
She never heard back. She says that many au pairs have children at home, but decide not to tell their host families. Carstensen insists oncalling them “au pair-women” instead of the popular Danish term ”aupair-girls”.
http://avisen.dk/au-pair-worker-fights-the-abuse_129842.aspx
By Blue Rose on Thursday, 22 of July , 2010 at 4:24 pm
As the Integration Ministry tightens the rules for au pair visas, politicians and the media are discussing whether the au pair system is being used to exploit young women from developing world countries like the Philippines, or whether it’s become a shady gateway for foreigners to settle in Denmark.
Whatever the case, it is clear that the ground rules have changed. A new bilateral agreement with the Philippines will allow the Integration Ministry to stop au pairs using stays in Denmark to obtain permanent residence. Under the new visa rules, it will no longer be possible for an au pair to live with a family member in Denmark, or with a family of the same nationality as themselves.
The new rules seem to be aimed at controlling the mushrooming number of au pairs travelling here from the Philippines. In 2009, of the 2,773 au pairs registered in Denmark, 2,165 – or nearly 80 percent – came from the Philippines according to the latest figures from the Integration Ministry. This means that the number of Filipino au pairs increased by 356 percent between 2004 and 2009, while the size of the Filipino community in Denmark grew by 76 percent from 4,721 to 8,317.
The ministry has also begun to run checks on the marital status of candidates for au pair visas. In a spot check carried out on 49 cases involving Filipinos, they discovered that over half had given false information and were therefore ineligible. To receive an au pair visa one has to be under the age of 30 and unmarried. Visas are also restricted to those who do not have young children in their country of origin. Merete Pårensgaard, the head of department at the Integration Ministry, said that the new rules would be enforced to ensure that au pairs were coming to Denmark as part of a cultural exchange rather than for economic reasons.
‘They are not especially directed at Filipinos or reducing the number of au pairs,’ she said. While there haven’t been any protests about tightening up the rules for au pair applicants, politicians and lobby groups fiercely disagree about the practice itself. The government’s view on the matter seems to be laissez-faire. For instance Søren Pind, the development minister, wrote on his Facebook profile that the au pair system could be compared positively to sending foreign aid to developing countries.
However, this statement provoked the ire of the head of the development aid charity MS Action Aid Denmark. ’Au pairs have absolutely nothing to do with development aid,’ Trine Pertou Mach told national daily Politiken. ‘Development aid is about transferring some of our wealth to the world’s poorest people. Are we going to invite to Denmark all the Africans who need to be saved from poverty?’
Her words were backed up by Niel Tofte, the general secretary of Care Denmark, who also thought that the minister was off the mark. ‘It is like comparing apples and pears, and one cannot do that,’ he told Politiken. ‘Au pair girls from the Philippines will not solve world poverty.’
Anne Gautier, who has been involved with au pairs for a number of years and is a member of a network to protect the rights of au pairs, said that she too strongly disagreed with Pind’s remark. She describes the hardworking girls from East Asia as this century’s ‘skivvies’ – domestic servants who receive the worst pay and work under the worst conditions. ‘I spent 30 years in Spain and saw the same situation there. Now it is happening here in Denmark too. It’s become chic for families to have an au pair who can look after children and do the house work for just 3,000 kroner a month,’ she said.
Gautier teaches Danish to foreigners at a Hellerup language school and estimates that she has been in touch with around 1,000 Filipinos during the last four years. Instead of working as au pairs, she believes that they could contribute a lot more to Danish society if they were offered regular jobs. ‘Many of them would make excellent healthcare workers,’ she said. ‘They often speak much better English than Danes and have a strong work ethic. Unlike other minority groups, they adapt easily to Danish society.’
But she also pointed out that the problems with au pairs are not confined to the host countries. ‘The pressure on these girls comes from all sides,’ she said. ‘In the Philippines families also make unreasonable demandscv on these young women. They’ve become used to receiving support from them from abroad and there is a lot of corruption.
http://www.cphpost.dk/
By Blue Rose on Thursday, 22 of July , 2010 at 3:54 pm
The Filipina women who come to Denmark to work as au pairs not only have to work more than the 30 hours that the law allows. In a number of cases, their Danish host families have broken the law by seizing the women’s passports as a kind of guarantee that they won’t leave.
Right now, for example, a Filipina woman is trying to get her passport back from her previous host family that took it from her two months ago. She had problems and did not get along with the family, and now she wants to leave, says the Filipino General Consulate in Denmark to the online newspaper Avisen.dk.
Without her passport, she is unable to use the plane ticket that was supposed to bring her back to the Philippines, says General Consul Poul Krogh.
“The woman has been with her host family for a year, but when she wanted to leave she couldn’t get her passport back. Now the case is being processed at the Filipino embassy in Oslo,” he says.
The woman left the family because she was no longer able to work 14-15 hours per day. She was ordered to clean the host family’s home as well as with other members of the family, which goes strictly against all the au pair regulations.
Women fear losing their visa
Also the Churches’ Integration Services (KIT), which is in contact with the majority of the Filipina au pairs, have had several inquiries from au pairs whose families have seized their passports.
Recently, a woman was forced to work at the host family’s restaurant in the town of Skagen in northern Jutland. The family had taken her passport from her so that she could not leave.
KIT gave the woman a ticket to go to Norway where she was able to stay with friends, but she never got her passport back. She never reported the case to the police, which is not unusual according to Hans Henrik Lund, the leader of KIT. He says that the au pairs are afraid of being deported, because they no longer work as au pairs.
”The power is always with the Danish family, who can threaten to report the au pair to Immigration Services if they don’t do as they are told. And the Filipina women are well aware that their chance of winning is quite poor if they report the case themselves,” Hans Henrik Lund explains.
A hidden problem
Only on rare occasions, the authorities are informed when passports have been seized.
“But just because it is not reported it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen,” says Mette Pårensgaard, who is Office Manager at the Au Pair and Intern Office at the Immigration Services.
She says that every time the Immigration Services have information meetings for the filipina au pairs, the women ask about what to do if their families seize their passports. They have all heard that this has happened to others.
”We tell the girls that they should never ever hand over their passports. The host family can have a copy of the passport if they absolutely insist,” says Mette Pårengaard.
Illegal and humiliating
Having your passport taken away from you is a violating and traumatic experience, says language teacher Anne Grautier, who has taught about 1000 Filipina au pairs at a Danish language school.
“The girls are devastated – they feel declared incapable of managing their own affairs. Very humiliating for them,” she explains.
Neither the Police of Northern Zealand nor Europol have been able to inform Avisen.dk about the number of Filipino passports that are reported stolen or lost in Denmark every year.
From ScandAsia
http://avisen.dk/gidsel-trick-vaerter-stjaeler-filippinske-pas_130036.aspx
By Blue Rose on Wednesday, 21 of July , 2010 at 4:15 pm
For an increasing number of Filipino women, a term as au pair in a Danish host family has become the first step on the path to a longer stay in Denmark with a work and residency permit.
In 2004, 48 Filipinos received a Danish work permit. By 2009, that number had increased more than sixfold, to 295 work permits, writes daily newspaper Politiken.
The health sector is the big draw, with former au pairs finding work as social and health workers or nurses. And with good reason.
For years, nursing school has been touted by the Philippine government because finding work abroad as a nurse is easy.
For decades, the Philippines have had the export of labour as a clear strategy because the nation is unable to create a sufficient number of jobs at home. And the country is heavily dependent on the billions of dollars that Filipinos working abroad send back to their families in the Philippines each year.
Vice-president of the Danish Nurses’ Organization, Dorte Steenberg, thinks that it is both natural and healthy for the nursing profession to have foreign nurses flock to Denmark.
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Andre_sprog/English/2010/07/19/113718.htm
