Deputy Prime-Minister Chandra Prakash Mainali expressed his heartfelt thanks to Ban-Ki-Moon for the extra-ordinary assistance and love offered by UN at different times.
After returning to the level of ordinary social assistance in 2000, the introduction allowance was therefore (again) a copy of the reform of the ordinary social assistance in 1998, both regarding benefits levels and sanctioning principles.
This benefit replaced the ordinary social assistance benefit in the introduction period – the so-called introduction benefit.1.
Instead, the benefits for newly arrived immigrants were made comparable to ordinary social assistance throughout the introduction period.
Start assistance/introduction allowance was some 35 50% lower than ordinary social assistance, depending on the family situation (the reductions being lower for families with children) (Andersen, 2007).
Since September 2015, instead of benefits levels comparable to ordinary social assistance, newly arrived immigrants have been entitled to much lower benefits – the same amount as the state education grant (depending on age, family situation etc).
The ordinary social assistance in Denmark was reformed in 1998, and the introduction programme for newly arrived persons followed more or less the same lines with respect to the strengthening of conditionality.
The benefit levels were already returned to the level of ordinary social assistance in 2000, however, which was partially attributed to criticism from the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, which labelled the new introduction allowance as discriminatory (Breidahl, 2011).
As in 1999, these benefits were also considerably lower than the ordinary social assistance, but this time around the UNHCR did not raise the same criticism, as it was now also aimed at citizens with Danish roots who had returned after spending 7 years or more outside of Denmark.
