Fredrik Sixtensson and Tony Gunnarsson, American Affairs Journal, November 15, 2018

In 2015, immigration to Sweden reached an all-time high. At its peak, more than 10,000 people arrived in a single week. The total for the entire year was 162,877 people—1.6 percent of the Swedish population. In September, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven welcomed the immigrants, saying that his Europe does not build walls. A month and a half later, his government reintroduced border controls and decisively reduced immigration — perfectly illustrating Sweden’s ambivalence on this issue.

Sweden was for a long time a remarkably homogenous country. Its minorities were either few in number, such as the nomadic Sami, or culturally similar to the Swedes, such as the Finns. People moved out of the country rather than into it: about a million and a half Swedes left for America during the heyday of transatlantic migration. Immigrants, on the other hand, were rare. In 1945, foreigners made up only 1.5 percent of the total population of approximately 6.5 million, or around 100,000 people. These foreign born came mainly from Scandinavia and the Baltic littoral.

Today, the situation has changed dramatically. In a country of ten million, foreign-born currently number about 1.8 million, nearly a fifth of the population. Six hundred thousand have come since 2008. Sweden now has a larger percentage of foreign-born residents than even the United States.

Until the 1980s, immigrants to Sweden largely consisted of Europeans looking for — and getting — jobs. Today, the influx comes mainly from the Middle East and North Africa. Finnish, with a six-hundred-year history in Sweden, is now the third most spoken language after Swedish and Arabic. The migrants come seeking asylum and a large percentage are low-skilled: for example, 40 percent of Syrian immigrants arriving during the immigration peak have not gone to high school; for Somalis, the number is about 60 percent. The national Swedish average in 2017 was 12 percent.

{snip}

The cost of receiving immigrants during 2017 was 64 billion Swedish kronor, some 7.05 billion U.S. dollars. In a country of ten million, this amounts to $700 per person per year. By comparison, the Swedish defense budget in 2017 was about $5 billion.

As most newcomers do not work — more on that later — they are on average supported by the Swedish welfare state, admittedly one of the most generous in the world. The net cost per refugee per annum is 70,000 kronor (this figure excludes the initial costs mentioned in the previous paragraph) which means that welfare distribution to the refugee population amounts to some $4.5 billion.

{snip}

So why Sweden? A guess as good as any is that the generous Swedish welfare system makes migration to Sweden attractive. A family of six can in theory receive up to 32,000 Swedish kronor per month, more than $3,500, if the parents are unemployed.

{snip}

The ease with which one may become a Swedish citizen may be another contributing factor. Until recently, all confirmed refugees were awarded permanent visas. Anyone who resides in the country for five years becomes a citizen upon application—there is no test to ensure language skills or familiarity with Swedish society. This means that a substantial part of the citizenry does not speak Swedish, which in turn is provoking further debate. In the election that occurred in September of this year, an MP of Somali descent was elected after a campaign largely targeted at Somali people in the Somali language. Pundits are divided on whether this was a commendable effort to reach out to a marginalized community or the beginning of an “ethnification” of the Swedish electorate.

Moreover, Sweden’s labor market is not well suited to absorbing large numbers of low-skilled immigrants.

{snip}

The jobs that do exist are mid-income by international standards, and they are jealously guarded by the highly unionized Swedish work force. This mixture creates a difficult situation for immigrants: in nine years, only about half have found a job.

{snip}

Mass immigration has also contributed to segregation. In 1990, Sweden had three so-called “outsider areas”—areas with high unemployment, high drop-out rates, low voter-participation rates, and so on. In 2012, the number of “outsider areas” had increased to 186. More than half a million people — overwhelmingly immigrants — lived in these areas at the time. And since 2012, the number of immigrants has increased by 400,000 persons. That this will increase the population living in such “outsider areas” is obvious; likely, new areas will be added to the list. A 2015 study from Växjö University showed that the native population starts moving out when the immigrant population reaches 4 percent in a given area.

Some of these areas, if not entirely beyond the reach of the authorities, are at least hard to reach. In 2017, twenty-three of them were designated “especially vulnerable areas” by the police. These are zones where the police cannot operate due to resistance from the locals: locals in these areas may be reluctant to stand witness in court; violent religious extremism is present; and parallel societal structures exist. Parallel societal structures include, for instance, informal “vice patrols,” often with an Islamist bent, that tell people — generally secular or moderate Muslims — to keep their daughters in line if they have been seen wearing immodest clothing. Only fifteen years ago, this problem was unheard of in Sweden.

{snip}

In a much publicized case a couple of years ago, a male Muslim immigrant refused to shake the hand of a female employer at a job interview; he duly did not get the job. He then sued her for discriminating against him on the basis of religion, and he was awarded compensation. Such cases have created a dilemma, for they obviously put feminism at odds with multiculturalism.

{snip}

It is sometimes reported that Sweden nearly leads the world in rapes per capita. These comparative statistics are unreliable, however, as Sweden has a wider definition of what constitutes rape than most countries. But it is clear that the incidence of rape has increased: between 2014 and 2017, self-reported victims of sexual crimes increased from 1.0 percent to 2.4 percent of the population. At the same time, these crimes are becoming more brutal, including gang rapes, torture, and the like.

{snip}

Earlier this year, investigative journalists at SVT, the government-owned broadcasting corporation, delved into the matter, as Sweden does not keep official statistics on the ethnicity of perpetrators. They found that 58 percent of convicted rapists were born outside of Sweden, and eight out of ten assault rapists were born outside of Sweden. Of the latter, 40 percent had been in Sweden one year or less.

{snip}

Other crimes have also surged. Car burnings have increased by 400 percent over the last twenty years. In mid-August, 80 cars were burned across western Sweden in a coordinated attack, possibly launched in retaliation against the police for having busted a drug deal. Shootings have also increased. Last year, five times as many people were shot to death compared to twelve years ago. Deadly gun violence among young men is twice as common as in comparable European countries. To a large extent, shootings are concentrated in or near the above mentioned vulnerable areas.

{snip}

In 2017, PEW Research Center published an analysis forecasting the number of Muslims in Europe in the year 2050: If immigration is lowered to zero, Sweden’s Muslim population will be 11 percent (that of the United States is about 1 percent). If immigration moderates from recent highs, 20 percent of the population will be Muslim in 2050. And if immigration is at the levels of 2014 to 2016, 30 percent of the Swedish population will be Muslim.

{snip}