Yes! You can get a career i Denmark as an immigrant

Some might have heard about the scandal in a firm called Gate Gourmet, which lives of delivering food to passengers on airplanes.

Gate Gourmet keep fraud case behind closed doors (Google translated article from business.dk)
Gategroup-Betrüger ausfindig gemacht (NZZ Online)

I am happy to say that for the first time I feel that I have a real chance of getting a well-paid career in Denmark. All for too long the politics designed by the people in the Danish people party has told us that our parents came to Denmark to work in low paid jobs and as result we are expected to serve in such jobs too.

And it is true that it is difficult to find a country where the social heritage matters so much as in Denmark.

Youth who manage to get a higher education is most likely to have parents with the same level of higher education. It you are from the working class, then forget all about education.

The rich people have hired students to hunt down classmates who have copied books instead of buying them because the books used in education in Denmark are overpriced because they are a part of the salery the teachers earn.

The government has recently worked to remove student grants for people over 18 expecting their parents to pay for them which would be possible only by rich parents.

Most immigrants and poor people have given up about their education as they could see that it would be impossible.

Now Amanda Jacobsen is living proof that you can break that circle. She arrived in Denmark in 1984 from Iran. She changed her name to a Danish one as recommended by many teachers because most Danish firms would prefer Danish workers and she made her resume quiet colorfull because a lot of firms are in fact lazy and have outsourced the work of hiring people to various firms competing for the cheapest price.

Resumes in Denmark are not checked as they should be. In the old days the firms took in new workers when they knew the parents of a applicant or the stole workers from a competing firm. But in the end they had too few options when the old workers retired and now it is way easier to fool yourself into a Danish firm because the firms believe that they need foreign workers and new inputs to compete in a globalized world.

Amanda Jacobsen did show us the way to money and jobs. She has made us believe that we have a chance.

Reliving the worst time as a parent

When I read the newspaper of today it is impossible not to be reminded about the worst period of my career as a parent:

Danish Dragon boat capsized by wave, Politiken, 14 Feb. 2011

My son was at one of these schools. I remember that fear that you feel when you know that your child is isolated from the warm and love in your family unit. I remember how difficult the logistic was. He smoked tobacco which is a human right and they had to stand out in the cold long before it became law for the rest of the population.

Such hardship proved to be an awful test for him. It was certainly not something I as a responsible parent ever would have allowed my child to be exposed to.

Back then I feared for his life as he was forced to eat some different food than we as family was used to. They also had some wilderness expedition where he was exposed to the harshness of the elements.

In the end he survived although marked by the difficult period away from us.

I understand that the level of danger for the students involved in the capsizing in the ocean of course was higher. I pray that all the students will survive and return safe to their families. I hope that this episode will serve as a warning for other families considering allowing their children to study away from their home at such boarding schools.

You cannot be that lucky twice.

Sharing public cuts

In Denmark we have some boarding schools called "Efterskoler". They are not as strict as boarding schools abroad or at least so I am told.

But they do offer a some alternative lifestyle suited for those in our society who wants Danes to forget their social heritage and position themselves to a more globalized world where traditions and social standings in every of our small communities are forgotten and erased.

But do we not have a thousand year old culture which we need to deliver knowledge about to our children before they go out and make their impact on the world. How can we give them good tradition Danish values when we back out of the parenting role before time and leave it to some closed boarding school environment to give our children our values and learn our firm standards of character?

I fear that they are left without essential parts of their social heritage if they leave the family unit too soon. Denmark is a society where social heritage matters even up to the royal family. The result is peace and low crime when people in general know what they can make of life and how important it is to act properly because you know that your children will not be born equal with the rest of the children but they will start out from the level in our society you have achieved.

The youth culture of a country must never been equal with being confined in a boarding school where their individual character is shaved off so they can fit in the enclosed group at all cost. We need people who have a social heritage which stand out, so they can be leaders rather than just anonymous followers. You cannot create a peer group leader; you can only find the individual.

Some Danish firms use a lot of money trying to build the careers of their employees. It is a fatal mistake. Team-building based on sharing a single glass of wine or a beer Friday afternoon is the only thing which works. Luckily most firms realize that.

The families can learn from the firms. They can keep their children in the local schools. They can improve the social status of their child by hosting parties at home instead letting the children hang around in the cities. They can cooperate with volunteers in biker clubs who host parties for the local youth now where most of the parties hosted by schools or the authorizes has been targeted against minorities in the society which practice a more restricted form of partying.

The government has realized that the numbers of teenagers attending the boarding schools are too high and it has proven to be too costly for our society. They have introduced cuts and of course the boarding schools are protesting. It is a shameful form of marketing because the reason for the cuts is not ideology. It is necessary because Denmark almost singlehanded has decided to pay the debts of countries like Greece for no reason. We in Denmark all have to bear our burden. The boarding schools should take responsibility instead. It would certainly suit them.

They are complaining about risk of losing clients. They should not fear. The authorities in a lot of towns have troubled teenagers which they can ship to the boarding schools instead of the juvenile halls. There are parents who originally wanted to ship their children off to some third world country where they could be teach into submission by the use of corporal punishment which is forbidden in Denmark and therefore under watch by the social services. They can use the boarding schools instead. So where is the possible lack of students?

I had a son in one of these boarding schools, which you can read something about if you two years back. It was a terrible ordeal for both him and me as parent, which I wish for no other parent to relive.

Therefore consider me biased, but I truly believe that we all have to bear the burden our politicians have put upon us - also the boarding schools.

I did only believe it could happen in the Middle East or Africa

I recently saw this page about schools in Somalia:

Domestic prisoners of conscience's blog

Here in my town our social services are involved in trying to get children back home to Denmark from various countries in the Middle East or Africa. I didn't believe it could happen inside the United States too.

Rather shocking.

Just imaging how to be the child who find him or her-self cut totally off from what they have known so far.

Awful!!

It has become more difficult to raise a child

I remember when I had a fight with a boarding school years back. My son did smoke and at the time our so-called parliament suggested to raise the agelimit for tobacco to 18, which would have meant that I should had driven to the boarding school which was rather remotely located a lot of times.

I was lucky to have him back before the politicians decided to remove this freedom from our teenagers.

However they didn't stop there. Now they are looking at the alcohol our children consume. What is their point? Do they want us to integrate and become real Danes or is it just another excuse to toughend up against immigrants. The only way we can get native Danes to open up is to drink beer or wine with them. The same goes for our children. They will forever be known as the foreigners if they don't drink with their peers.

In many towns groups of parents arrange bag-parties for teenagers. It is a secure party-environment where the teens can enjoy themselves with alcohol but without any greater risk.

Those parent groups are under fire right now. The police wants more money from our politicians and it demands crimes committed. By disallowing the parties and suggesting that the teenagers might party with various youth gangs it is certain that a raise in juvenile crime is waiting just around the corner.

Thailand is no longer a country for tourists

The military decided to go in and remove the protesters.

By choosing this method they have now called for a 15 year ban for visits to their country.

They could have chosen another path. They could have allowed the former prime minister to return. They stated that he was corrupt. I just have to say after having lived in a EU country since 1972. Corruption is the privilege of politicians. Look the coffeeclub down in Brussels. Thousand of lobbyists hangs around the politicians paying for dinners, girls and any other activity the politicians enjoy.

How many lobbyists are living in Brussels and what kind of money goes to the politicians. No one knows because once you remove the bizarre surroundings they work in their acitivities become even more secret. We need to laugh at them in order not to react violent due to the harsh conditions they put us in.

It has become a struggle to survive in Denmark. The only difference between the people living in the fields after the earthqueke in Haiti is that we have a television to watch them in. As long as we have this little difference in quality of live, we are happy because then we know that some out there in the world has it a little worse than us.

All our torment, this evilness of cutbacks in schools, care of our elderly who in some cases have to use a diaper for number 1 twice (it can be turned) and closing of hospitals so we have to travel so far that our cars will run out of gas if we don't stop for a refill and a stay in a motel, can be traced back to the politicians in Brussels.

But still we don't choose to arming ourselves. Our police arrests 1,000 of people just to target two criminals but at least they don't use snipers.

That is the difference between democracy with the necessary curruption as we like it and dictatorship.

Thailand did choose another path. Not only by shooting at the protesters but also because they blackmailed an innocent Danish boy a year back.

So please stop traveling there.

They don't need your money to celebrate that they are good at killing people.

My God - can your own government do that?

I just read that a confidential DEA report explains that it was our former minister of justice - Lene Espersen - who called the former U.S. embassador Cain in to order him to let the DEA demand Camilla Broe extradited.

And it doesn't stop there. An article from the Danish newspaper  BT explains that they ordered the DEA to invent charges about 10 episodes with the narcotics smugglers. Our present chief of the police Reinmann gave the Americans a manuscript advising them how to fabricate their case. Apparently Americans must have little or no experience in writing charges down. Otherwise he wouldn't have done it.

I am quite shocked. It seems that her ordeal is fully based on that some politicians should achieve some political goal.

I am not blaming the DEA for allowing her back for a trial. It is free publicity for them that someone gives them a manuscript for a crime and all the have to do is to pick her up and issue a press release telling people that it doesn't matter for how long so-called criminals are on the run. They will be arrested in the end.

Most people know how Danes struggle with immigrants. I am a immigrant. I know my place and I know that I would never be accepted as a Dane on the same level with Danes who are coming from families who have lived in this the most developed country in the world for generations. I won't seek a shortcut which is associating with criminals. It is a solution sought by too many immigrants in Denmark. So many in fact that the newspapers are told to be quiet about the ethnic origins of a criminal to avoid accusations about racism.

I have not been in the United States but I guess that they see immigrants in the same way. I guess that they would like to tell immigrants that they should not come to the United States and take the jobs from ordinary tax-paying citizens and associate with criminals to get a job where their salery is coming from criminal acts. It seems that the wages Camilla Broe got for her work while she worked in the United States was profit from crimes.

In Denmark we always say that money does not smell. It should not matter how your employer gets his money to pay you for a legal job, but of course here we are talking law not morale. Of course if you work in a business who sells arms to countries in war, you must think about the victims in these wars. Of course you have to think twice before you walk in shoes made by small children who have just lost their diapers or drink a cola manifactored by a firm who have killed off employees from trade unions.

It does not made you a criminal in legal terms but you have a morale burden to answer for.

However here we are talking of actions which should never have reached the court systems. Danish tax-payers have paid for the actions of Espersen and Reimann - not Camilla Broe. It is unfair in a time where we are facing a financial crisis and people loose their jobs. It was expenses we could have avoided.

But more important the Danish parliament was mis-informed. It is against the law. Now we have no choice to ask members of our parliament to demand a vote of confidense. The present government must resign. The present minister of justice has a more serious problem explaining this case than he had explaining his role in a car accident months back.

Here is the articles:
Danmark bestilte udlevering af Camilla Broe, BT
DK bestilte udlevering af Camilla Broe, TV2