The Swedish Humanitarian Experience

"Sweden will now have the Nordic region's toughest framework for criminal deportations."

"Those who come to Sweden and commit crimes have forfeited Swedish hospitality and should be deported."

Swedish Migration Minister Johan Forssell

 

"My Europe does not build walls." Sept.2015

"It pains me that Sweden is no longer capable of receiving asylum seekers at the high level we do today."

"We simply cannot do anymore.  Nov. 2015

Former Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, Social Democratic Party

 

"There was a time when Sweden was looked upon by American liberals as an inspirational example of the Scandinavian welfare state. Although Europeans were less impressed, even the country’s immediate neighbors tended to, grudgingly, accept Sweden as a senior brother."

"After staying out of World War II, Sweden had evolved into a high-performing export-oriented economy, based on a stable parliamentary democracy and social consensus. The country had top-notch health care and education. It enjoyed social and gender equality, had low crime rates and little ethnic conflict. While grounds remain for optimism about some of these indicators, especially in the industrial sector, most have been transformed beyond recognition."

"Present-day Sweden carries the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of gangland killings in Europe. It boasts the lowest average age of serious offenders, with children in their low teens being arrested for murder. Increasing segments of suburbs are officially classified as “especially vulnerable areas,” where it is “hard, bordering on impossible” for the police to operate. In layman’s terms, these are no-go zones, where local clans rule and where first responders will not enter without flak jackets and police escort."

Stepan Hedlund, GIS Reports online 

A police officer patrols the immigrant borough of Rinkeby, in Stockholm, on Aug. 31, 2022. (Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images)

 

 Once one of the most tolerant, welcoming of European nations toward refugees and migrants, Sweden's experience with that open-handed friendliness has resulted in the country now taking to offering foreign national adults $51,000 should they decide to voluntarily leave Sweden. For a family, that voluntary repatriation rises to $88,000 happily handed out to "lawful residents", should they decide to return to their country of origin -- actually in fact, to leave Sweden for any other country at all. As in !!please leave!!, we'll pay you handsomely to abandon us for anywhere else on Earth!

 

Come September, any foreign national who having committed a crime and having been sentenced to any punishment greater than a mere fine, will be liable to deportation. "Prosecutors will be required to request deportation where the offence constitutes grounds for removal", explains the Swedish Migration Agency. And under these new rules, the expectation is that deportations will rise from the current figure of 500 yearly, to 3,000 government-assisted (booted-out) departures annually. 

 

Police secure the scene of an Aug. 19, 2022 shooting at Emporia Shopping Center in Malmo, Sweden. (Johan Nilsson/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images)

 

 Residency permits are to be revoked for criminality or misconduct; in failing to comply with laws, posing a security threat, or having unpaid debts. This government initiative to come into effect by July 2026, under the rubric of "good conduct assessment". Tougher requirements will be imposed for those planning to become Swedish citizens from June forward. Applicants will thence forward have to demonstrate "good conduct", and prove they are able to adequately support themselves financially. Prospective citizens moreover, must have been resident in the country for eight years and demonstrate through tests their knowledge of the Swedish language and societal culture.

 

No more open border policies, as when, in 2015, Sweden accepted 163,000 migrants applying for protection at the peak of the European migrant crisis when refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, fleeing their nations' wars pushed Europe to the brink of being totally overwhelmed. Sweden, as did Germany at the time, generously rose to the occasion, flinging wide their borders. 

 

Sweden had already previously opened its doors to foreign nations. There were 665,600 foreign-born nationals in Sweden in 1985, representing 7.8 percent of the population. That number was 2.2 million last year, representing 20.2 percent of Sweden's population. It took awhile, but gradually over the past decade immigration and refugee rules became more stringent, bringing the situation to the present tense with the country's more intensely severe crackdown.

 

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson last month stated his aim was to form a majority government with the Sweden Democrats following September elections; the Sweden Democrats Party is far-right, and anti-immigration. This party last year apologized for its neo-Nazi, antisemitic, racist past. Political debates have tackled endlessly the degree to which immigration is linked to the incomprehensible levels of criminality taking place in Sweden. 

 

A Sweden whose gun crime death rate tops the European Union. The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention's statistics reveal that four deaths per million inhabitants took place in 2025, in comparison with Europe's average of 1.6. Caught in the crosshairs of gangland shootings, the past three years has seen 23 innocent bystanders killed. There were 317 explosions -- linked to gang-related protection rackets -- in 2024 -- leading Sweden's prime minister to admit: "It is clear that we do not have control over this wave of violence".

 

Local gangs are depicted as represented from first- or second-generation migrant backgrounds; typically high school dropouts, and from marginalized areas marked by poverty and unemployment, according to the Global Organized Crime Index. Sadly, the Swedish experiment in humanitarian openness is not in and of its generous impulse, enough to make good citizens of those whose heritage, culture and prior experiences make them unsuitable to meld into civilized democracies as 'good citizen' fodder.    

 

Police patrol the streets after a man was shot dead in September in a suburb south of Stockholm  Nils Petter Nilsson/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock