Sweden - Immigration

SWEDEN Sweden became the first European country in 2013 to grant automatic residency to Syrian refugees and has since seen asylum requests rise to record levels, which are still expected to reach about 90,000 in 2015. [Sweden] receives the highest number of refugees per capita in the EU and is second only to Germany as a destination for Syrians fleeing the Middle Eastern country's civil war. One in three refugees were found to be receiving financial help from local authorities ten years after their arrival. http://www.thelocal.se/20150305/asylum-seeker-drop-in-sweden-as-denmark-numbers-plummet ........................................................  Segregation between ethnic Swedes and people from foreign backgrounds has widened in the past two decades in some of the biggest towns in Sweden, according to the Dagens Nyheter daily. The three most ethnically divided municipalities in 2013 were Botkyrka and Södertälje near Stockholm, and Kristianstad in the south of Sweden. According to Dagens Nyheter this is because the municipalities have invested in high-rise buildings where the number of people from a non-Swedish background is high, but also has large clusters of detached housing areas, largely occupied by well-off native Swedes. The segregation differential for the capital Stockholm in 1991 was 14 percentage units, compared to 22 percentage units today. In Gothenburg it has gone up from 14 to 25 and in Malmö in southern Sweden from 16 to 22 percentage units. Compared to 1991, segregation has risen the most in Kristianstad, and Örebro and Linköping in central Sweden. The former has seen an exceptional rise, from 6 percentage units in 1991 to 27 today. John Östh, researcher in cultural geography at Uppsala University, predicts the trend will continue. “Seen over a long period, the development could be unfortunate. You make segregation so much stronger. We have a strong influx of people, but don't build as many houses. We, perhaps, aren't even ready to integrate them in school. I am immensely positive to our immigration, but we do have integration problems. Segregation will continue to rise,” he told Dagens Nyheter. http://www.thelocal.se/20150310/segregation-on-the-rise-in-sweden-suggests-survey  COMMENT Despite a significant political movement towards support of limiting immigration, it doesn't look like mainstream Swedish political parties are changing immigration policy (which I believe is related to Sweden's foreign ambitions and foreign policy:  (a) EU membership priority, as well as (b) US foreign policy led priorities). Guess these towns are the immigration issues hot spots: Botkyrka Södertälje Kristianstad Stockholm Gothenburg Malmö Kristianstad Örebro Linköping Ylva Johansson is preparing a new law that would force all regions to take in asylum seekers http://www.thelocal.se/20150205/all-municipalities-should-take-in-refugees EXTRACTS: Sweden’s Social Democrat integration minister Ylva Johansson has announced that she is drafting a new law designed to make sure all regions take in asylum seekers and offer help with jobs and housing. “The distribution is unreasonable. We need to make changes in the law for everyone to take responsibility,” she told Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan on Thursday. She said that the bill’s core details were still being worked out, but that the main principle was achieving a “more even distribution” of refugees between Sweden’s 290 municipalities. “We need legislative changes to ensure that all local authorities take responsibility for refugee protection,” she added. [...]  The country’s opposition centre-right Alliance bloc, which formed the previous coalition government is also in favour of maintaining Sweden’s open borders and the four parties it includes are working on their own integration policies. On Thursday afternoon the leader of Sweden's biggest opposition party the Moderates, Anna Kinberg Batra, proposed strengthening the requirements for family stream immigrants in an interview with broadcaster SVT. In April 2010 Sweden became the first country in the EU to legislate income requirements for immigrants who want to bring their families to Sweden. But Kinberg Batra accused the law of being toothless.  [What?  It was the Moderate party's law.] The country’s nationalist party, the Sweden Democrats, which won 13 percent of the vote in the last general election in September 2014 is the only party in Sweden in favour of cutting immigration numbers. http://www.thelocal.se/20150205/all-municipalities-should-take-in-refugees ........................................................  It looks like 'family stream' immigrants are further incoming immigrants whose families are already residents. Voters opposed to immigration only have one party to vote for:  Sweden Democrats.  All others are in favour of maintaining the status quo.  Next general election in Sweden should be an interesting one.