Some thoughts on the migration situation in Sweden

by Fei Long Yu

First of all, I want to apologize to those who takes offense by my blogpost. It’s not my intent to actually raise some anger or disappointment, this blogpost presents some thoughts from my side regarding the migration situation in Sweden.

Sweden is a country that has a generous asylum and migration system. For example, the latest news from the Ministry of Migration is that Sweden will “relax” the rules and regulations and accept more migrants fleeing their home country for different reasons, such as war (e.g. Syria). Sweden has also something called relative migration; which means that if there’s one parent in Sweden they can legally take their whole family to Sweden (a spouse and the children, if they is under 18) and get permanent residence permit.

The last year, Sweden accepted 103,059 new migrants, which the Ministry of Migrants says is the highest number of migrants accepted to this day. Except for returning Swedish citizens (19.9%), most of the migrants came from Syria (4,6%), followed by Afghanistan (4.5%), Somalia (4.4%) and Poland (4.3%). This is a relative high of migrants; the Swedish population is around 9 million citizens.

The migration topic a relatively sensitive in Sweden, no one wants to speak openly about the migration situation in Sweden. During these last year, an “old” political party has been brought into the light, whereas it has a specific agenda that many migrants in Sweden experience as offending. One of the agenda is to limit the migration in Sweden, but many of the migrants in Sweden have interpreted this as “kicking all the migrants out of Sweden”. Therefore many migrants were afraid of what would happen if this political party actually got into the parliament (as of today it’s in the parliament, but without “actual” power).

Why does this party want to limit the migration to Sweden? Is the migration in Sweden a problem? Well, the migration is not the issue here. The issue is how to actually incorporate all the migrants in the society effectively. First of all, when the migrants enter Sweden, they have to take a mandatory language course in Swedish, so they understand at least the basic language and should be able to commit simple conversations. After this mandatory introduction the migrants are supposed to search for a job and start working.

This is where the first problem starts. Since many of these migrants do not have an education (maybe except for the elementary school or similar) they cannot take on any job that involves an education or complex language explaining (for example receptionist). So these kinds of jobs are out of question.

What does this leaves the migrations with? Blue collar jobs. Herein lies the second problem; blue collar jobs are becoming fewer and fewer since many of these works are outsourced outside of Sweden. Then, what’s next on the list? To start an own business! If the migrant is lucky enough to have some relatives in Sweden this might work, but it’s not unusual for the migrants to be alone in Sweden, so therefore they cannot open up a business since they can’t borrow money from the bank (the bank require an income if a loan is to be granted). From here it’s just one option, to be supported by the government and take a part of the welfare.

What does this mean? Well, if Sweden is accepting more migrants that can’t incorporate into the society or support themselves, who pays the bill for these migrants? The citizens in Sweden that pay taxes. This may be one of the reasons why a party as this one has been able to “catch” many votes and gotten into the parliament; many people want a change before letting more migrants in to Sweden. The people want the welfare to be spent on their own population first (e.g. education and elder care) before spending money on migrants. As said in the beginning of this post, this is not a blogpost meant to provoke or upset anyone; this is just a blogpost stating my personal thoughts about the situation about migration in Sweden.

Reference

http://www.scb.se/Pages/Article____352486.aspx