Farmers, Work Permits & Immigration Rules: LWID S6E5

Episode summary

Farmers, work permits & immigration: Narcis and new co-host Sabrina discuss Denmark’s new nitrogen rules and the farmers’ backlash, alongside changes affecting non-European workers and international students, including a new lower-salary work permit and shorter job-search rights, with a focus on what these developments mean for internationals living in Denmark.

Topics

(01:02) International Leadership

(04:40) Farmers & Nitrogen Rules

(13:19) New Work Permits

(19:10) International Students

Our team:

• Cohosts: Narcis - https://www.linkedin.com/in/narcisgmatache/ and Sabrina - https://www.instagram.com/sabrina.strose/
• Podcast Operational Manager: Bence - www.linkedin.com/in/bence-bodogan-b3830b5b
• Audio Editor: Jose - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-larke-mejia/
• Graphic Designer: Sariah - www.linkedin.com/in/sariah-romero
• YouTube: Ahmet - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmet-akkoc/ 
• Transcript Editor: Alina - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alinacoman/

👀 LWID Substack: English -Romanian - Polish - Spanish - Turkish - Italian - German - Hungarian - Ukrainian

🛍️ LWID merchandise:  https://last-week-in-denmark.tpopsite.com/shop

❓ Email:lastweekdk@gmail.com

Follow: 

https://www.instagram.com/last_week_in_denmark/ 

https://www.facebook.com/lastweekindenmark 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/lastweekindenmark 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC74z1nBOfol1EiPxHPHiHnw

website: https://lwid.dk/ 

🎵 Music,Jack Leatherbarrow @ Wizmedia: https://wiz-media.co.uk/

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Narcis George Matache: Hello, hello everyone. I'm Narcis George Matache, and welcome to the Last Week in Denmark podcast. Each week, we talk through some of the biggest stories and developments from the past week in Denmark, with a focus on how they affect internationals living here. So, if you're an international living in Denmark or thinking about moving here, or you are a Dane who came back to Denmark, welcome home. We’re glad you're here. If you're a first-time listener, we've got five full seasons in our back catalog for you to explore, and now we're back with new episodes every week during season six. Joining me this week is Sabrina. Hello, hello, Sabrina.

Sabrina: Hello, Narcis. I'm Sabrina Johnson.

Narcis George Matache: Hello, Sabrina Johnson. This is your first time on The Last Week in Denmark Podcast. Welcome as a new co-host. How does it feel?

Sabrina: Thank you. It feels… it feels good. I'd say it feels good.

Narcis George Matache: Let's try to have fun with this, and also entertain our audience a little bit, because I have a message for you. Hey, you. Are you listening? What are you doing now? Are you biking? Are you driving? Are you just sitting on the couch listening to us? You know what? I don't know if anyone told you this, but you're fucking amazing. Did you know that? 

Narcis George Matache: What I want to say is that I sent a message in the Last week in Denmark, in the newsletter, and I said there that internationals are primed to lead, to build, and to take initiative. Because, you know, they had the courage to leave their home, their comfort zone, and try something new, right? That made them fearless, so they are the embodiment of courage. We are the embodiment of courage. We are also internationals after all. So do you agree with this? Do you agree that internationals are actually primed to be leaders, to be builders, to be innovators?

Sabrina: I believe we're a bit crazy. Not all of us, but I would say a lot of us, yeah, to be internationals and to move to a new country, whether permanently or temporarily, takes risk. It takes some form of leadership, even if it's for yourself. But, um, I'd say we're more a bit crazy rather than we're primed to be leaders. But we definitely have exercised that muscle of leadership 

Narcis George Matache: We exercise courage, right? And, I think for a society to go forward, it needs people who have the courage to come in front and take initiative. And I'm not surprised to say or to see that a lot of the people that you see shining out there or leading, they are actually internationals.

They have an international background. Even in X Factor now they have winners musicians, all of them three years in a row, with international background. So it's not just, let's say, leaders in the sense of leading a project or leading an organization or so, but it's also leaders by art, by music, by writing.

There's many other ways you can be a leader, right? It shouldn't be misunderstood that it's just a person dressed up in a suit who stands in front of 10 people.

Sabrina: Absolutely, I agree. There's the unseen leadership. No one probably sees the leadership I do at home or just getting my car sorted. I imagine that's quite a bit of leadership that needs to happen. And I think often leadership can also be not so appreciated, particularly if it's a different kind of leadership.

We may be leaders, but we could be a leader according to our own values or places that we come from. So yeah, I think that's more of a philosophical question than it is this or it is that.

Narcis George Matache: I just want, all the people who are listening to us now, that whenever they are out there in society, they should just keep their head up and be like, “Holy shit, I'm amazing”.

Sabrina: Well, we don't have a choice, do we? We don't have a choice. We have to keep our heads up. We've got bills to pay, Narcis. Like, the bills don't get paid with your head down. 

Narcis George Matache: I want people to stop thinking of themselves as guests, as people who need to have permission to do this or that. I just want people to embrace this place as their home. Embrace it and take initiative, participate in what's happening around here. And in the end, just by listening to this podcast is already a first step, right?

To understand what's happening and maybe have a reason to open this conversation further at your dinner table, lunch with your coworkers, or at a cafe if you're self-employed and working for your own business, and so on. Or if you're a mother on barsel or a father on barsel, going to some sort of a parents meeting and so on. So there's various places where our subjects could be further disseminated and discussed about.

So we have three topics to go over, and the first one is about farmers. I'm pretty sure you have seen, heard, this subject in society. It was quite big, it was quite hard to not see it, and especially that I was quite interested to see that farmers are using as their largest protest sign words in English, “No farmers, no food, no future.” The slogan of their entire protest in English.

Sabrina: Why is that? I do find a lot of English words are suddenly thrown into Danish conversation, or I just go to the supermarket, Narcis, and I'm like, “Oh, that's in English.” I look at the back at the ingredients and the how to make whatever it is, and English is not to be seen. It's Swedish, German, Norwegian, no English.

But all the marketing's in English. So again, I feel like Denmark has this relationship with English where it kind of brings it in sometimes, but not always. Is it to make a point?

Narcis George Matache: I think they just, they choose English because it's easier to convey the message than Danish. 

What happened is that this week a law was passed, a law that basically limits how much fertilizer or nitrogen-based fertilizer can be applied on certain fields. Until now, there was another law that simply limited to all farms equally how much fertilizer they can put. Fine. The problem with this law, or the problem in the opinion of the farmers, is that now it depends on which farm and what its proximity it has to the fjords and how easy it is for the fertilizer to somehow go into waterways, and based on that, they might get a lower or a higher limit. And why is nitrogen fertilizer important? Because it's about output. It's about agricultural produce, right? Uh, it's their livelihood. As a farmer, you want to produce as much as possible per each square meter you have of land. So if all of a sudden part of your farm is no longer allowed to put even probably no fertilizer at all, let's say extreme case scenario, right? Then you'll have to hope for forces of nature that you'll make some production on that field, or you'll just give up completely on that field because it's, it's not worth it. So that's why the farmers got angry because the problem was that it's not yet known which fields will have these lower limits of fertilizer.

This will be calculated after the law has passed, sometime in two months from now. Well, I'm a farmer, and I need to prepare my fields for next year. What the hell am I gonna do, right? Do I know if I can count on half of my farm? Because many of them actually have quite significant, um, let's just say debt to banks. So the moment they get one or two or three years of bad harvest, they go bankrupt. They are very sensitive to price changes. They're very sensitive to lower production. So that's why for them it's their livelihood. 

Sabrina: We also know who will be disproportionately affected though. If it's about, you know, who can use what on protecting their plants, it's gonna be vegetables, fruit and vegetables, rather than if you're, say, a pig farmer or a cow farmer, it's gonna be vegetables. So I think we know at least, or at least if you are a farmer, you'll know whether you'll be disproportionately affected or not.

Narcis George Matache: Well, if you're a vegetable grower, you got the exception, right? There was an exception made for one year until 2028 to figure out more. Basically, they said, “Oh, we need more time to calculate what is the effect on vegetable growers and how should we, like, approach them.” But to be honest, it's only 8% of all cultivated land that is vegetable growers.

Sabrina: Oh, really?

Narcis George Matache: Yeah, a very small amount of land that's actually in danger. But, of course, we don't want to lose “Made in Denmark” vegetables brand. 

Sabrina: Yeah.

Narcis George Matache: Unfortunately, there are some, let’s just say, products that might not be viable in the future. For example, here in the North, we have these special Limfjord potatoes. They're literally made on the fjord, like next to the fjord. Those have no future.

Sabrina: Yeah. 

Narcis George Matache: This is a big topic. Why? Because right now the law has been passed, and even though there is an exemption made for vegetable growers, there's still a problem in place because the farmers are not willing to back down. And now, you can say that they lost also their connection with their party. Because as you know, Venstre, the Liberal Party, is actually the farmers' party.

It used to be their political home for centuries. They were founded as a farmers' party, and Venstre itself, most of it, I think 75% of the members of the Parliament, voted in favor of this law, marking a huge breakup between rural Denmark and Venstre.

It used to be one of the biggest of the Blue Parties, and now all of a sudden they might lose even the farmer base. And who's gonna take that? That's the big question. Who is gonna take and represent farmers in the future? It'll be interesting to follow the development on it. But do you know what happens when nitrogen goes into water? Why are the fjords dying?

Sabrina: I did have a bit of a Google. I'm one of those people. I'm not asking Claude yet, um, or AI. And it turns out when the nitrogen enters the water, it reduces the oxygen, and then it kills some of the life in the water. That's what I understood. I saw in Vejle, though, their kommune are actually investing quite a bit of money over the next five years. I think it's around 3.3 million Euros, around 25 million Danish kroner, into bringing the fjords back to life.

I think there was a funeral a couple of years ago. They gave a funeral, Greenpeace gave a funeral to the fjord. May it rest in peace. I hope it will rise again. And then here they are resurrecting it and growing, I think it was eel leafs? Some kind of grass, eelgrass or something like that. They're growing, um, mussel-based stuff, helping the mussels grow.

So they are investing back into it, which will hopefully inspire others. But overall, Narcis, like so far what we're hearing is, oh, the farmers are upset with Venstre. We're hearing the fjords are dying. But again, the question for me would have been why does it matter to me? Why do you think the average person should care?

Narcis George Matache: They should care because as you said very clearly, obviously, if there's less agricultural produce on the market, this could lead to higher prices. But at the same time, I imagine that the imports will just increase, and that will maintain the prices at the optimal level. So I don't think that the effect will be so high.

It simply means that if you want Danish made in Denmark products to eat, those will become more expensive with time anyway. The question here is the fjords are dying because too much nitrogen goes into them, point. That's something that all of the people agree. That's a fact. Now, the question is how do we reduce the amount of nitrogen going to the water? So, we need to find another way, or we need to do simply agriculture further away from the fjords. And all that land that's in there needs to be simply transformed into forest. Because. in the end, we want to make a third of Denmark into forest land. 

Sabrina: A very flat forest land. 

Narcis George Matache: Yeah. 

Sabrina: But I would also say, what should we do? I mean, the average person, can we do anything? Or is it like Vejle is showing, it's down to the kommune themselves to protect their own nature? Like, each kommune has its budget for the natural community and its natural spaces and landscapes. Are they not responsible for the waters and the rivers? Is it incumbent on the farmers to, you know, to manage their nitrogen? Or actually, is it more about a deal between the two?

Narcis George Matache: It's a deal between all of them, right? They made two years ago the Green Tripartite, where they had the farmers, the nature organizations, the politicians, and the industry. And they came together and they made a deal, “Okay, we need to do something about it.” And it was based on voluntary, let's just say, contributions from the farmer side that they will slowly remove the use of certain fields that were simply too close to the water, like the fertilizer from there will go into the fjords. I think either they don't read what they sign or they’ve just seen some numbers on a paper. But when they realized what it actually means, that that's when they had this awakening and realized, “Oh, wait, what did we sign up?” Because the farmers association is signatory of the package that included this law. So, this was known two years ago that it's coming. So I have no idea what happened in the meantime. I don't understand, and I think that will be clarified over the next weeks, and we don't need to go and dwell more into it.

Sabrina: Let's watch this space. This story is to be continued

Narcis George Matache: Exactly. And let's move on to another very large group of our audience, non-Europeans. Sabrina, are you a non-European now?

Sabrina: No, no, I'm European. Other British counterparts not living in Denmark, they're non-European, yes. But I came before the end of 2020. So I'm here under withdrawal agreement, and as long as I live in Denmark, I will be in the EU for life. 

Narcis George Matache: So the moment you move to another country, that's gone.

Sabrina: No, no, I have, I got my permanent residence now as well, so therefore I'm allowed to be outside of Denmark for around two years, up to two years. 

Narcis George Matache: So basically British citizens who were here before Brexit happened, they can keep their European status as long as they stay here. 

Sabrina: As long as they live in the country they were in. So same for me, I was in Denmark, so as long as I live in Denmark, I can't transfer anywhere else. 

Narcis George Matache: So we basically have two categories of British people, Europeans and non-Europeans right now.

Sabrina: In the world, yes. But the ones who are here legally, yes, they are EU unless they have a Danish passport, which makes them EU anyway.

Narcis George Matache: But why are we talking about non-Europeans is basically two laws that have been passed this week. First law is the fact that now there is a new work permit that non-Europeans from selected countries can get on a much, much lower annual salary. So now you can come to Denmark and get a work permit for a salary, annual salary of three hundred and twenty-two thousand kroner, which is way, way, way lower than the usual work permit minimum salary for non-Europeans, which is around four hundred and fifty or four hundred and sixty thousand. So as I said, much, much higher.

That means that, that allows companies from our side of the country, maybe not in Copenhagen, but in our side of the country, to also hire people from those countries. What are those selected countries? As you can imagine, there's sixteen of them, you'll be surprised to find the largest ones in the world in there, China and India, and I know we have a lot of audience from there.

But also you have there UK, you have USA, Brazil, you have Western Balkans, the ones who are not yet part of the EU, and Moldova and Ukraine, of course. And, very interesting addition, Malaysia. Which, if I'm not wrong, it's actually a Muslim country. I'm surprised to not see Philippines there because there was a lot of effort put into bringing nurses from Philippines and SOSU assistants, but somehow Philippines is not on that list.

Sabrina: It will be interesting to know how they selected those countries and what the criteria was, 'cause a lot of them sound like very wealthy, well-to-do countries. Is there, do you think, some kind of financial benefit in there, or maybe there's a certain skill set thereafter, a reason why they picked those countries over others?

Narcis George Matache: It’s hard to find a common denominator for the 16 countries. I think that simply they had to choose the candidate countries in the EU, so that's why the Western Balkans, Moldova, Ukraine are there. They had to choose the strategic partners, like UK and USA, and they had to choose the countries that they have created new partnerships with in the last two years, like India, right?

There was a huge discussion about the Denmark-India partnership. China, that was a recent one. Uh, Brazil was last year, if I'm not wrong. Uh, so I think they simply chose the countries that they have made recently trade agreements or some sort of collaboration agreements, plus the countries that are wanting to join the European Union, plus the strategic partners in NATO. I don't think that it was a lot around the availability of workers because, again, Philippines is missing from there, which is crazy because there's even Danish schools being opened now in Philippines to train future SOSUs to come to Denmark.

Sabrina: So am I right to understand, Narcis, is this permanent or is it temporary? How long does this agreement last for?

Narcis George Matache: Well, the possibility to apply for this work permit is as long as the unemployment rate is low. So, as long as it's under 3,75%, it's fine. Right now, the unemployment is around 2,1%, if I'm not wrong. So it's quite low. It has been this low for the past couple of years. The chances of it going much higher is pretty unlikely for now because Denmark has a very, very vibrant and hardcore economy. We're one of highest growing economies in the world right now, thanks to pharma, of course, but also thanks to other sectors of economy. So our workforce is continuously expanding and expanding and expanding again. We broke records, I think every single month for the past three years for how many people have found a job. So we're creating a lot of jobs, every month. Denmark is in a good path, so that's why they allowed more workforce to come here. But then I'm looking at the other law that was passed.

Sabrina: Go on, what is it? Tell us.

Narcis George Matache: Basically what it says is that the non-Europeans who came here to study, and they came to study at an education program that, let's say looks qualitative on paper, but it's not acknowledged by the Danish education system, then they no longer have the same rights as the other students who go to programs that are sanctioned by the Danish state. Because, to be honest, a lot of these colleges and business academies and whatnot, they created various programs to attract non-Europeans who paid very high tuition fees and became a business, literally. And this was being used or misused as a way into the workforce. Instead of coming here to study, they were actually coming here to find a job and work. So they wanted to close that down. So the possibility to study and work is not really there anymore. So there's a few things that you can find out. If you read the newsletter this Sunday, you probably have seen that we talked about it, and you can go deeper into it. But I think the other interesting thing is that for every single non-European, no matter from which type of education they finished in Denmark, they only can get a job search permit for one year now. So no longer three years, it has been reduced to one year.

Sabrina: So I have two things there. Um, students were encouraged to come to study and then said they were coming to work. For me, why would that be a bad thing? If foreign people are coming, they're learning from you, and then they're investing back into your country, isn't that positive? Like, one, you need more skilled workers. Two, Denmark's population isn't big, and we have an aging population, so why wouldn't you want people to come and stay? I would prefer that than they come study and then disappear again and take all those benefits back to where they came from.

Narcis George Matache: Problem there is twofolded. You can say that they come here to study at those not-sanctioned programs, but they are not really studying. They don't really go to the education. They do other kind of work, like delivery for Wolt, they are not really studying anything.

That was the problem that they found out when they graduated from there, they couldn't even speak proper English, never mind Danish. It misused by both sides. It was misused by the users, but also misused by the universities themselves, or it's a big term to call them universities.

Sabrina: Yeah. Shouldn't the sanctions then be against these professional schools or these universities that if you're going to have these programs and these benefits, you need to demonstrate A, B, C, D, and E? I don't see why you'd punish the people using the program. If it's been set up to be misused, then people are gonna misuse it.

Narcis George Matache: It's not an easy topic to discuss, but basically they will make it harder to recruit students because if they see that there's all these limits now, it no longer looks like an attractive alternative to a work permit. The other problem is, why would they remove or make the job search in Denmark shorter? Because we all know as an international, it's extremely hard to find a job in Denmark. It's unbelievable.

Sabrina: The other point of what I wanted to say is that, um, the UK is going through something similar, maybe other European continent countries are too, reviewing their immigration policies, particularly in regards to students, and making it harder. But then what you're gonna have is the impact on the bona fide, the actual universities, right?

You're making your country look more challenging to come and study in. So for example, I do know the UK, the universities are struggling because they've made their immigration rules so challenging that they're losing their master’s students. And as you can imagine, master's students coming from non-EU continent countries are paying a lot of money. And there's even a saying, you pretend to learn, and we pretend to teach.

And everyone is very clear that money's just coming into the university 'cause it's good income for them. So they lose that. The UK are basically, for their high immigration policies, are then cutting off the likes of Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Loughborough, UCL, they're cutting them all off. Is Denmark not going down that same avenue? If they're gonna start cutting off their internationals, it's going to impact their top universities.

Narcis George Matache: I don't think so, because what they are doing at the same time is that they're expanding the number of English-speaking places and they are actually targeting more heavily European students. So they simply seem to have a preference. They have decided to be more selective or be selective about who can come to Denmark and who should be staying in Denmark further on. And they prefer - their words, not mine - similar culturally fit people to the people that are already here. It's unfortunate that they have decided to go in this direction and that's why this whole, let's just say, war against Islam that's going right now in the political world in Denmark and, in general that you will see that their targeting will be that they will make it harder to be a non-European/

Sabrina: Okay. But I also see that non-European continent countries are essentially fighting back, and I don't mean they're doing that aggressively. Plenty of African continent countries are now saying, “if you don't have nice rules for us to come in, we're not gonna make it easy for you either.”

So if you, if you're saying, for example, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, South Africa. If you're saying we can't come in, well you can't get that student visa you would ordinarily think you would just get because you come from the EU. So they are fighting back, and some of these, you know, exotic countries we're looking to go to for our, gap year, you know, year abroad, maybe we might see the results further down the line where they're not so easy either. So, hmm, is that another watch this space, Narcis?

Narcis George Matache: Yes. I think, with this, we kind of covered and taken all the time we have available in this podcast. We normally have three topics for the podcast, but today we had such big topics that we covered only two. I hope you have enjoyed and you have learned something new about farmers, about the status of non-Europeans, and maybe if you know anyone from those 16 countries, you can tell them the good news that it's a little bit easier to find that will give them a work permit in Denmark now.

So thank you for listening. Thank you, Sabrina, and congratulations on your first episode. See you guys next time. And maybe see you at Welcome September events. I'll be in Copenhagen on 25th and 26th of September. I will be in Aalborg on 12th of September. So see you in one of these large events meant to welcome internationals, if you are also coming. Bye!