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| - Denmark on Thursday announced the appointment of a special ambassador for migration, tasked with trying to establish camps for asylum seekers outside the EU. The ambassador's mission will be to knock on doors to find non-EU countries willing to host so-called reception centres abroad to house asylum seekers while their applications are processed. "An ambassador for migration can help open the door for Denmark's proposal for a new approach to stop the migration pressure on Europe and ensure that real refugees are helped faster and better in the surrounding areas," Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said in a statement. The proposal has been the subject of criticism both at home and across the EU. For Copenhagen, it is meant to discourage migrants from applying for asylum in Denmark, but also to "strengthen the EU's external borders, improve the deportation of rejected asylum seekers and strengthen asylum and migration authorities in third countries along migration routes," a government statement said. The newly appointed ambassador, Anders Tang Friborg, will be assisted by a task force. In 2019, 2,716 people applied for asylum in Denmark, the lowest figure since 2008. In 2015, in the midst of the migration crisis, more than 21,000 people applied, though that was only an eighth of the number for neighbouring Sweden. In 2017, Social Democrat Mette Frederiksen, who went on to become prime minister in the 2019 election, presented a plan to send "non-Western" migrants back to camps and special reception centres for migrants in North Africa. cbw/jll/po/bp
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