Now this policy of openness faces severe strain, even as Sweden needs new workers who will pay the taxes required to sustain the generous welfare state for which Sweden is known. More Swedes are retiring than entering the workforce—a development with profound consequences for the future of the welfare state. And indeed, much of the current economic growth has been fueled by the foreign-born, whose taxes keep the system solvent. But here’s the problem: The unemployment rate among the foreign-born is 20 percent, more than three times the national level.

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I asked Patrick Joyce, an economist with Ratio, a Swedish think tank, about this seeming discrepancy. “Sweden’s economic upturn is benefiting from the migrants who came a while ago—those who came as children, or have been educated in Sweden,” he said. “They are doing much better in the labor market than the newly arrived. In a way, they are helping the economy to grow.”

The newly arrived refugees, by contrast, have a much harder time finding work, Joyce said. Only about half of them have a basic education, which takes them out of the running for jobs in Sweden’s advanced service economy, which, at the minimum, requires vocational training in addition to basic education. Only 5 percent of jobs on the Swedish labor market are suitable for the unskilled workers. “So 50 percent of the newly arrived are nonskilled, but only 5 percent of the available jobs demand low skills,” Joyce said.

There are other obstacles, too, stemming from the challenge of assimilation. Joyce pointed out that it’s highly unlikely refugees arriving in Sweden will know the language. “Entry-level jobs in the Swedish labor market usually are in the service sector,” he said. “Even for low-skilled work in a cafe … you need to have some basic knowledge of Swedish.” New arrivals also lack the networks and personal contacts needed to find employment. More than half of the jobs in the Swedish labor market are obtained through such connections, he said. “Migrants tend to get worse job offers through their own networks than Swedish citizens tend to do.” In other words, a large number of unskilled new migrants aren’t finding jobs even though there are, at least on paper, many vacancies.

Patrik Öhberg, a professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, told me that the issue is not that large numbers of immigrants come to the country, something that’s been happening for decades, but that many Swedes believe that “they come here but they don’t work.” “Over the last 10 years, we have 1 million people coming to Sweden,” he said. “So [the concern is] the housing market doesn’t work, the schools are not working.” Additionally, Sweden has become segregated, a problem that manifests itself through what many people perceive as higher crime rates—though the data on that are mixed. “When political parties start to talk about criminality, it taps into the discussion of immigration,” Öhberg said. That’s an issue on which the Sweden Democrats are seen to be credible.