Sweden also does not want migrants anymore
Earlier this month, Sweden’s Minister of Finance Magdalena Andersson delivered her maiden Speech as chairman of the Swedish Social Democratic Party and thus the presumptive successor to the longtime Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. Andersson began, predictably enough, by celebrating the triumph of the Swedish welfare state over the “grinning bankers on Wall Street” neoliberalism. Then, in a turn that shocked some loyal party members, Andersson addressed himself directly to the country’s over two million refugees and migrants. “If you’re young,” she said, “you need to get a high school diploma and move on to a job or higher education.” If you receive financial support from the state “you must learn Swedish and work a certain number of hours a week”. In addition, “here in Sweden, both men and women work and contribute to welfare.” Swedish gender equality applies “regardless of what fathers, mothers, spouses or brothers think and feel.”
In 2015, Swedes were extremely proud of the country’s decision to receive 163,000 refugees, most from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. “My Europe receives refugees”, Lofven sa Right then. “My Europe does not build walls.” It was the heroic rhetoric of an almost vanished Sweden. The Social Democrats now use the harsh language that only right-wing extremist nativists from the Sweden Democrats used in 2015. A Social Democratic body recently stated with satisfaction that since “all major parties today stand for a restrictive migration policy with a strong focus on law and order”, the refugee issue is no longer a political responsibility.
Five years ago I wrote a long article about the influx of refugees arriving in Sweden with the inflammatory title (which I was not consulted about) “The Death of the Most Generous Nation on Earth.” Sweden has obviously not died since then, and last week I contacted many of the people I spoke to then with the expectation of issuing a Mea culpa and to acknowledge that social democracies have more resilience than I was prepared to admit. I turned out to be wrong about being wrong.
Earlier this month, Sweden’s Minister of Finance Magdalena Andersson delivered her maiden Speech as chairman of the Swedish Social Democratic Party and thus the presumptive successor to the longtime Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. Andersson began, predictably enough, by celebrating the triumph of the Swedish welfare state over the “grinning bankers on Wall Street” neoliberalism. Then, in a turn that shocked some loyal party members, Andersson addressed himself directly to the country’s over two million refugees and migrants. “If you’re young,” she said, “you need to get a high school diploma and move on to a job or higher education.” If you receive financial support from the state “you must learn Swedish and work a certain number of hours a week”. In addition, “here in Sweden, both men and women work and contribute to welfare.” Swedish gender equality applies “regardless of what fathers, mothers, spouses or brothers think and feel.”
In 2015, Swedes were extremely proud of the country’s decision to receive 163,000 refugees, most from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. “My Europe receives refugees”, Lofven sa Right then. “My Europe does not build walls.” It was the heroic rhetoric of an almost vanished Sweden. The Social Democrats now use the harsh language that only right-wing extremist nativists from the Sweden Democrats used in 2015. A Social Democratic body recently stated with satisfaction that since “all major parties today stand for a restrictive migration policy with a strong focus on law and order”, the refugee issue is no longer a political responsibility.
Five years ago I wrote a long article about the influx of refugees arriving in Sweden with the inflammatory title (which I was not consulted about) “The Death of the Most Generous Nation on Earth.” Sweden has obviously not died since then, and last week I contacted many of the people I spoke to then with the expectation of issuing a Mea culpa and to acknowledge that social democracies have more resilience than I was prepared to admit. I turned out to be wrong about being wrong.
Sweden had opened up to the desperate people fleeing civil war and tyranny from the Middle East, not because, like Germany, it had a terrible sin to atone for, but rather out of a sense of universal moral obligation. Their Europe did not build walls. But of course the actual Europe in 2015 did just that and left very few countries – especially Germany and Sweden – to bear the burden of what I then called “undivided idealism”. Yet Sweden’s leaders, like Germany’s, were prepared to shoulder that burden. I found that loyal Social Democrats were convinced, almost complacent, of Sweden’s ability to integrate a large number of barely literate Afghan children and deeply pious and conservative Syrians, just as they had done with cosmopolitan Bosnians and Iranians in previous years. “A strong state can take care of many things”, the head of the Swedish Left Party reassured me.
Swedes have learned since 2015 that even the most benevolent state has its borders. In recent years, the country has been hit by sky-high crime rates. According to a Report by the Swedish Crime Prevention Council, Sweden has for the past 20 years gone from having one of the lowest to one of the highest levels of gun violence in Europe – worse than Italy or Eastern Europe. “The increase in gun murders in Sweden is closely linked to criminal environments in socially vulnerable areas,” the report states. Gangs – whose members are second-generation immigrants, many from Somalia, Eritrea, Morocco and elsewhere in North Africa – specialize in drug trafficking and the use of explosives. Crime has become number one in Sweden; Before she said a word about migration, Andersson boasted that her party added 7,000 new police officers, built more prisons and drafted laws that created 30 new crimes. She condemned “those who claim that it is certain cultures, certain languages, certain religions that make people more likely to commit crimes” – but her own government has substantiated these claims.
It is hardly surprising that newcomers lag behind Swedes on every well-being index, but the gap is very large. In a new book, Mass Challenge: The Socioeconomic Impact of Migration to a Scandinavian Welfare State, Tino Sanandaji, an economist of Kurdish origin who has become a leading critic of Sweden’s migration policy, writes “foreign-born represent 53 percent of individuals with long prison sentences, 58 percent of the unemployed and receive 65 percent of social spending; 77 percent of Sweden’s child poverty is in households with a foreign background, while 90 percent of those suspected of public shootings have an immigrant background. ” Figures like these have become widely known; The number of Swedes who prefer increased migration has fallen from 58 percent in 2015 to 40 percent today.
Sweden is no longer a welcoming country and does not want to be seen as one. In June 2016, the country revised its long-term policy deny refugees permanent asylum; The adoptees received temporary permits for either three months or three years, figures dictated by the minimum allowed under EU rules. The law was intended to be a temporary response to the crisis last autumn, when the country literally ran out of places to put asylum seekers on; it has since been renewed. Last year, the country received only 13,000 refugees, the lowest number in 30 years. One recently study written by a senior Swedish migration official, concludes that Norway and Denmark, both notoriously inhospitable to refugees, “are increasingly seen as positive examples of how to deal with refugees and international migration.”
The Social Democrats are hardly alone in their right-wing shift. The center-right party, the Moderates, is now cooperating with the Sweden Democrats on migration issues, even though they are not formally affiliated. Diana Janse, a diplomat and former government official who is running for parliament as a moderate, complains that the ruling party has kept the Sweden Democrats on the fringes of Swedish politics by what she calls “brown-smelling – stamping party members as fascists or” brown shirts “. Janse had a much less sympathetic view of the right-wing party when we spoke six years ago. “What was extreme in 2015 is mainstream today,” said Janse.
Abandoning old ideals is deeply deplorable for Sweden’s progressives. Lisa Pelling, head of research at the think tank Arena Ide in Stockholm, admitted that “we have definitely seen a repressive turn in the political language” as well as in politics. Pelling acknowledged – which she did not do in 2015 – that “there was a need to do something” to stop the huge influx of refugees, but believes that the restrictions should have been allowed to end when that tide subsided. She pointed out that temporary permits – even if they are renewed, as they normally are – often prevent asylum seekers from receiving the type of long-term vocational training they need to enter the labor market. This is hardly the only obstacle to working: Sweden also lacks the extraordinary assembly line that carries new arrivals in Germany from language programs to vocational training to internships to jobs. Maybe the state needs to be stronger, but the Swedes have run out of generosity on that front. It’s not hard to sympathize: 2016, the country spent a staggering $ 6 billion on refugees – more than 5 percent of its total budget.
That inflammatory headline was not quite as hyperbolic as I thought. Of course, Sweden is still an enormously prosperous, relatively equal and fairly secure country. It is rather a deep Swedish impulse that has died. Sweden asked too much of itself. For the past 20 years, an ancient and homogeneous culture has undergone a demographic transformation of breathtaking proportions – without prior intention or even public debate. The United States closed the gates of immigration in 1924 when the proportion of foreign-born citizens reached about 15 percent. That figure in Sweden is now 20 percent; and thanks to ongoing labor immigration and family reunification, the number of migrants continues to grow each year by about 100,000 people (or almost 1 percent of the population). Almost all of these migrants come from societies that are radically different from Sweden – less educated, less secular. In response “Sweden did not die”. It changed cherished values for survival.
Sweden, Europe is written big. The European Union responded to the growing backlash against the arrival of more than one million migrants in late summer and early autumn 2015 by reaching an agreement with Turkey in 2016 to prevent refugees from entering Europe. It solved the political problem without addressing the underlying humanitarian crisis. Since then, Europe has sought, not very effectively, to help African and Middle Eastern countries that now host the overwhelming majority of those who have fled violence and oppression in the region.
The current battle on the edge of the continent, where Belarus has tried to blackmail Europe by sending refugees from all over the world to Poland and Lithuania, has been too talkative: EU leaders have expressed full support for Poland’s brutal response, even if it leaves thousands of helpless people exposed to sub-zero temperatures in the forests near the Polish-Belarusian border. No one has suggested that they review their allegations of persecution for fear that tens of thousands more would come. In any case, Europe will not serve as a refuge for the world’s 70 million refugees and displaced people; The vast majority of these people have to settle closer to home, although rich countries will have to bear most of the cost of offering them a decent life.
Democratic societies do not rest on the abstract principles expressed in their basic documents. They rest – as Americans have now learned, to their great annoyance – on the collective beliefs of their own citizens. Abstract principles exert a strong grip, but lived experience can free people even from values that are considered sacred. It is up to the leaders not only to remind people of these values but to curb, exploit and reshape the forces that most deeply threaten democratic principles.