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Comment by surfmike | Hacker News Reader

Definitely Denmark stands out compared to their Scandinavian measures.

But looking here (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_refugee...) they still have 4x refugees per capita compared to the US, 2x more than Australia, and still have more refugees per capita than Germany. And they're well above most EU countries. And I can almost guarantee they're more generous to refugees than the US.

Seems funny for a US paper to be calling Denmark "harsh".

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Yeah and Denmark isn't sending home 80k people like Sweden, exactly because it's trying to be responsible to its own population too. Denmark is one of the most generous countries and the article is clearly written by someone who don't really get the Domestic situation. Also keep in mind Denmark is a small country and one in only 5 who spend more than the UN recommended gdp for aid.

In terms of attitudes, Denmark is the least welcoming to foreigners, of all Western countries: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/03/21...

In-group altruism is correlated with out-group hostility.

They have to be, otherwise the vast welfare state system collapses. It's why the big European welfare states can't handle huge amounts of immigration very well. The greater the welfare state, the greater the influx of immigrants that you're likely to see wanting to get there. The only reason the US was able to absorb the massive immigration it did on a few occasions in its history, was due to the almost complete non-existence of a welfare state at the time, immigrants had to make it on their own at very limited additional cost to the state or tax system. If you deployed a full European style welfare state in the US, and then attempted that scale of immigration again, it would collapse the political system and economy.

Sweden has more immigrants per capita than the US. It doesn't seem to be collapsing.

This is an interesting line: do you have links and research which support it?

I don't want to distract from your bigger point (because the relative numbers have probably gone up at least with respect to the US), but these are mid-2015 numbers, i.e. before the big refugee wave started. They also only count refugees, not asylum seekers.

We need to remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_the_Danish_Jews

That certainly was a proud time of the Danish people.

However, the jews were also forced to pay vast amounts - in cash, jewelry and more - to the kind fishermen who ferried the jews over to Sweden. Not all danes participated out of kindness of heart.

The heroes of then - the fishermen - were what we today label as "people smugglers".

The real heroes were the danes who participated without pay and simply because the jews were their freinds, neighbours, parents of their childrens friends etc.

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