I remember that a decade ago people would try to gaslight you into thinking that there were no problems with migrants in Sweden.
"Our crime statistics are high because we changed how we count crimes!"
You would hear phrases like that. It was actually bizarre looking from the outside in how much denial there was about these problems. Maybe if it has started being addressed back then then it wouldn't have gotten as bad.
Sweden had a pretty weird situation 10-15 years ago. The two parties that were traditionally resisting too much immigration turned around (M and S). Probably because, like all European countries, Sweden needs immigrants to keep the demography sane.
Meanwhile a political party with a neo-nazi history caught the spotlight (SD), which made it even more difficult to criticize immigration.
It was like a perfect storm, making immigration a very difficult subject to have a moderate opinion about.
And the no-go zones were just fox news right-wing propaganda. Well, my Swedish friend drove me through one (daytime) two years ago.
Pretty significant cultural changes, like now in their hometown, there are separate swimming days for the sexes at the public pool. When I started going to Sweden 30 years ago, all the beaches were top-ional.
Things like, I think he called them the "bearded babies", which was a group of thousands of refugees who were obviously up to 30 years old, claiming they were 17, so they didn't need to provide any information and received preferential treatment.
It was enough to lead my die-hard liberal punk rock guitarist friend to start voting SD in last few elections. They were the only ones who would talk about the problems.
> commented Oliver, although the segment wasn’t even focused on immigrants and Sweden, a country whose crime rate has steadily declined since 2005
> Selin completed a study recently focusing on negative news reports about Sweden’s acceptance of refugees. It found numerous exaggerations and distortions, including false reports that Sharia law was predominant in parts of the country and that some immigrant-heavy neighborhoods were considered ‘no-go zones’ by the police.
The only real numbers the article gives are
> About 62,000 people are linked to criminal networks in the country, police say.
which says... nothing? What does "linked to" mean? are those people that buy illicit drugs off the street? are they "linked to" a criminal organization?
> Last year, 363 recorded shootings led to 53 deaths across Sweden, according to police.
Absolute numbers, without per capita context (given above) this is not useful.
> In 2022, the gun murder rate in Stockholm was roughly 25 times higher than in London.
This is _gun_ murders specifically, but for all murders, London is comparable to Sweden overall (~1.3 per 100k population), I wasn't able to find numbers for Stockholm specifically, but yeah, if I die I die, I'm not sure I would particularly care whether it was due to a knife or a gun.
Overall, seems like another overblown narrative that doesn't reflect reality to me. Violent crime just doesn't seem to be trending upward in Sweden.
Curious if others have information that counters what I've found.
As much as you're right, posting facts about negative aspects of immigration will get you in trouble or you'll get branded names and down voted at best.
You can apply for the grant if you have a temporary or permanent residence permit in Sweden
* as a refugee
* as a quota refugee
* as a person eligible for subsidiary protection
* on the grounds of exceptionally distressing circumstances
* or because of your connection to a person who has one of the residence permits listed above.
Given the profound lack of higher order thinking that led to Europe's experiment along these lines over the last decade or so I wouldn't be so sure if they have.
The article addresses this. In Sweden in particular, a lot of the migrants are from countries in unrest. Last year's reward was $1k and exactly 1 person took it. The article said 'experts don't expect there to be a substantial increase in claiming the offer' with the increase to $35k which is surprising to me, but I suppose still makes sense as $35k won't make Damascus any safer.
Per the article this is from the party that "began as a neo-Nazi movement in the 1980s but rebranded itself as a conservative party, with curbing migration at the center of it platform."
I would imagine it's ideological demagoguery and not concerned with serious critical analysis of long term effects.
These are two separate things: (1) the party being right-wing, (2) the immigration or more precisely the lack of integration causing problems for the Swedish society.
The previous left-wing government that basically said "we're taking everybody" had good intentions but extremely poor execution. Merkel's Germany didn't do much better tbh.
In any case, when migrants don't integrate, and you fail to make them do so, you can either ignore the problem hoping it goes away or try to solve it in a way that is human and causes as little suffering as possible.
> from the party that "began as a neo-Nazi movement in the 1980s
Good find. By the same token though, the Democratic Party in US was the white supremacist party in the 19th century. There is probably ideological demagoguery involved with them as well.
In 2018 a report made by the Expert Group for Studies in Public Economics (ESO), which has studied the employment level of refugees between 1983 and 2015. The study shows, among other things, that the integration of refugees gradually deteriorated during the period, and that an average refugee represents a cost of SEK 74,000 per year for public finances.
There is considerable uncertainty in the calculations, but they indicate that the net redistribution via public finances to an average refugee over his or her entire lifetime in Sweden amounts to an average of SEK 74 000 per year.
This is what I would expect. They're a massive drain on the taxpayer and even if they work - which is mostly not the case in Germany - it's in small jobs that cost the taxpayer more in subsidies than they provide. Immigration in most cases is a net negative. And I'm not even talking about the other factors, such as crimes like rapes, terrorism, etc., a drain on resources such as doctors and public administration, ...
Japan had a similar policy, with respect to legal immigrants it had made a point of recruiting, in the immediate wake of the global financial crisis. They'd buy (largely) Peruvian/Brazilian factory workers of Japanese descent a plane ticket and approximately $3k of compensation (IIRC) in return for them surrendering their work-compatible visa.
After reading this article, it's crazy to see how the attitude has shifted, and number of immigrants exploded in recent years. I just spent the past 2 weeks in Japan and was surprised by the sheer amount foreign workers. I remember almost a decade ago until COVID, whenever I visited my wife's hometown in very rural Fukuoka, a Russian woman married to a Japanese woman and myself were literally the only foreigners in the town. When I went there 2 weeks ago, I saw several foreign workers at a 7-eleven.
These headlines grabbing schemes are fine but what really matters is the annual migration statistics. If 20k take up this offer but 40k new ones come then it was a failure at best and a smoke screen at worst.
Never trust a European politician who says they don't like immigration. Wait to see what their policies actually do to the figures
Readit News
> Sweden's gun crime death rate is now the highest in the European Union.
> Statistics show that gang shooting suspects are predominantly of migrant background.
[1] https://news.sky.com/story/swedens-deadly-gang-war-has-turne...
None of the other Scandinavian (or Nordic if you're being pedantic) countries have ANY issues with random explosives.
"Our crime statistics are high because we changed how we count crimes!"
You would hear phrases like that. It was actually bizarre looking from the outside in how much denial there was about these problems. Maybe if it has started being addressed back then then it wouldn't have gotten as bad.
Meanwhile a political party with a neo-nazi history caught the spotlight (SD), which made it even more difficult to criticize immigration.
It was like a perfect storm, making immigration a very difficult subject to have a moderate opinion about.
Pretty significant cultural changes, like now in their hometown, there are separate swimming days for the sexes at the public pool. When I started going to Sweden 30 years ago, all the beaches were top-ional.
Things like, I think he called them the "bearded babies", which was a group of thousands of refugees who were obviously up to 30 years old, claiming they were 17, so they didn't need to provide any information and received preferential treatment.
It was enough to lead my die-hard liberal punk rock guitarist friend to start voting SD in last few elections. They were the only ones who would talk about the problems.
> commented Oliver, although the segment wasn’t even focused on immigrants and Sweden, a country whose crime rate has steadily declined since 2005
> Selin completed a study recently focusing on negative news reports about Sweden’s acceptance of refugees. It found numerous exaggerations and distortions, including false reports that Sharia law was predominant in parts of the country and that some immigrant-heavy neighborhoods were considered ‘no-go zones’ by the police.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?location...
The only real numbers the article gives are > About 62,000 people are linked to criminal networks in the country, police say.
which says... nothing? What does "linked to" mean? are those people that buy illicit drugs off the street? are they "linked to" a criminal organization?
> Last year, 363 recorded shootings led to 53 deaths across Sweden, according to police.
Absolute numbers, without per capita context (given above) this is not useful.
> In 2022, the gun murder rate in Stockholm was roughly 25 times higher than in London.
This is _gun_ murders specifically, but for all murders, London is comparable to Sweden overall (~1.3 per 100k population), I wasn't able to find numbers for Stockholm specifically, but yeah, if I die I die, I'm not sure I would particularly care whether it was due to a knife or a gun.
Overall, seems like another overblown narrative that doesn't reflect reality to me. Violent crime just doesn't seem to be trending upward in Sweden.
Curious if others have information that counters what I've found.
Edit: sorry, Wikipedia was the source for London homicide rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_London
Here's the English language page about the repatriation compensation (currently 10,000 SEK):
https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/...
----
You can apply for the grant if you have a temporary or permanent residence permit in Sweden
They've probably thought through all the ways to exploit this, just curious.
https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/systems-thinking-and-the-cobra-e...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/522136/sweden-immigratio...
Deleted Comment
I would imagine it's ideological demagoguery and not concerned with serious critical analysis of long term effects.
The previous left-wing government that basically said "we're taking everybody" had good intentions but extremely poor execution. Merkel's Germany didn't do much better tbh.
In any case, when migrants don't integrate, and you fail to make them do so, you can either ignore the problem hoping it goes away or try to solve it in a way that is human and causes as little suffering as possible.
Good find. By the same token though, the Democratic Party in US was the white supremacist party in the 19th century. There is probably ideological demagoguery involved with them as well.
Dead Comment
Like a pro-slavery party?
Wait, they actually do that! :
https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-seehofer-warns-refugees-who-t...
There is considerable uncertainty in the calculations, but they indicate that the net redistribution via public finances to an average refugee over his or her entire lifetime in Sweden amounts to an average of SEK 74 000 per year.
Swedish article
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/ny-eso-rapport-flyktingin...
http://archive.today/6zwMH
https://web.archive.org/web/20240914135437/https://www.svt.s...
It was controversial, from a number of angles.
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/global/23immigra...
This isn't possible in Japan. Japan does not recognize same-sex marriage.
Never trust a European politician who says they don't like immigration. Wait to see what their policies actually do to the figures