“It was as if I had built a house, and they tore it down in a minute.”
This is how Maryam, a young Syrian woman, described the day the Danish Immigration Service informed her that her residence permit had been revoked — and Maryam isn’t the only one.
Denmark’s decision to end the protection of Syrian refugees dates back to 2015, when the parliament introduced a new temporary protection status — one that doesn’t exist in other European countries and carves out a particularly “thin” form of protection for asylum-seekers fleeing generalized violence, primarily from Syria. This means that as soon as the human rights conditions in their home country improves slightly, protection can be withdrawn, even if the situation remains “serious, fragile and unpredictable.”
