25 Tino Sanandaji THE COLD TRUTH-TELLER Illustration by Jaya Nicely for POLITICO

Sweden’s fiery immigration debate has divided the country into groups for and against. But one economist’s writings are drawing readers from both sides of the debate. On his blog — and in “Mass Challenge,” a bestselling book he self-published earlier this year — Tino Sanandaji mixes fierce criticism of government strategy with policy prescriptions and reasons to hope for the future. “He doesn’t tell scare stories, he talks about a reality few want to talk about,” is how Norwegian Migration Minister Sylvi Listhaug put it after a visit to Sweden, during which she met the Iran-born economist.

Make no mistake, Sanandaji, who arrived in Sweden when he was nine, is no fan of his adopted country’s historically open-door policies. But the target of his criticism is not so much Sweden’s immigrants as it is its inability to integrate large numbers of new arrivals. It’s a phenomenon, he argues, that’s turning the country into a class-based society, with non-native Swedes increasingly consigned to ethnic ghettos.

“Sweden’s experiment with large-scale immigration from the third world to a welfare state has been unique in its scale but has in many ways failed,” he writes. “Sweden’s social problems are becoming more and more concentrated in that part of the population with an immigrant background.”

Despite his critical stance, Sanandaji, 37, has defied attempts to discount his views as those of a xenophobe. Helped by deep public policy expertise, he defends his positions with data — not anecdotes or generalizations. And he’s far more scathing about the far-right Sweden Democrats than he is about the government. As Swedes heading to the polls late next year struggle to make sense of competing claims on immigration, Sanandaji and his ideas are certain to gain ever greater prominence. “It isn’t too late, as long as there is a willingness to learn from the expensive mistakes of recent years,” he writes.

Check the full listing of the POLITICO 28 Class of 2018, and read an explanation of what this ranking means.