Since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, many European countries have taken in migrants who have not qualified for refugee status or asylum but have subsequently struggled to deport those same migrants to their home countries.
Sweden, which took in one of the most significant shares of asylum seekers per capita during the crisis, now has around 100,000 illegal immigrants living there, a huge number for a country with a total population of just over 10 million people.
According to the Swedish border police, by the end of 2021, 18,000 people had been ordered to leave the country but 10,000 had simply refused and gone underground.
To increase deportations and stop migrants from running away from authorities after receiving deportation orders, the Swedish centre-right coalition government announced this week that it would be commissioning the building of detention centres, labelled “return centres.”
Minister for Migration Maria Malmer Stenergard held a press conference on Thursday, June 29th, stating, “The government is implementing several measures to combat the shadow society and put in place an orderly reception of asylum seekers and effective return in the event of refusal,” broadcaster SVT reports.
“Today, there are far too few actual consequences when you get a decision that your asylum application is rejected,” she said. “If regulated immigration is to be maintained, a no must be a no. If your asylum application has been rejected, you must also return [to your country].”
Last year, according to the Swedish Immigration Service, 74% of asylum claims were rejected and the applicants were ordered to leave the country. However, a mere 39% left the country voluntarily, with many others not leaving at all.
“Last year, about 74% of asylum seekers had their applications rejected and thus also [received] a deportation decision. This means that a large majority of asylum seekers need to return [to their countries of origin],” Minister Stenergard said.
Statistics for Sweden from the European Union statistical agency Eurostat show that of all the returns of non-EU nationals in 2022, under 20% were involuntary, or forced, deportations. In comparison, forced returns from Norway accounted for than 90% of all returns and in Finland, more than half of the returns were involuntary or forced.
Earlier this year, Minister Stenergard stated that the government was also considering ways to increase voluntary return migration, including for those who are not illegally in the country but may have failed to integrate into Swedish society or the workforce.
“People who are residents in Sweden and who want to move back to their home countries should be given information about the possibilities for return and the help and support they can get,” the Swedish government said earlier this year.
Social Democrat MEP Carina Ohlsson accused the government of being influenced by the populist Sweden Democrats (SD), which is not a formal part of the government but does support it through the political agreement known as the Tidö Agreement that was signed following last year’s general election.
Immigration has long been a central issue for the Sweden Democrats and last year, the party’s leader Jimmie Åkesson co-wrote an opinion article for the newspaper Aftonbladet in which he called for migrants who refused to or could not integrate, to be helped to return to their home countries.
“Since 2010, Sweden has granted over 1.2 million residence permits, equivalent to more than a brand new Stockholm. Unemployment is almost five times higher among foreign-born compared to native-born,” Åkesson said.
“Incentive structures and the welfare system must be reformed, so that people in exclusion cannot get caught up in welfare dependency, but are either forced into society or encouraged to re-migrate,” he added.
Swedish police, who have previously noted links between gang crime and immigration, have also called on the government to do more to deport illegals and a survey conducted last year that was commissioned by the Swedish Police Union found that 64% of officers wanted the government to carry out more deportations.
Sweden’s overall migrant population boomed between 2010 and 2020 as the country granted around 1.2 million residency permits, leading to around a fifth of today’s population being born in countries outside of Sweden.
