Tag: invandring

24 Nov. – SD’s land days of plenty

SD’s Jimmie Åkesson revels in his popularity
pic: SVT.se

The Sweden Democrats are in the middle of their “Land days” (landsdagar) congress in Örebro and the changes in their platform have been several. A change of heart? A maturing social and political awareness? Or a paint job to look a little more up to date?

The official SD political platform will likely include the following changes:

  • ok for homosexual couples to adopt kids: “all children have the right to have a mother- and father figure in their lives” they write
  • will go along with the current, legal 18-week limit for question-free abortions (not their previous platform of a 12 week limit)
  • no upper age limit for free mammograms or cervical cancer screenings (SvD.se/congress).

As Ewa Stenberg at DN writes, SD’s core ideology is still intact, though: people who come to Sweden must adjust to Sweden, or leave; the number of people emigrating to Sweden must decrease – in fact, more should leave than stay; SD will see a minimum of language differences, cultural differences and religious differences; public service radio and television should act to increase social cohesion, and; previously convicted, repeat offenders can just be tossed into jail again without trial – if they’re really, really hopeless cases.

Moreover, the party held that: asylum seekers should only come to Sweden first via the United Nations’ quota system, and that preference should be given to women, children and persecuted minorities such as HBT-persons and Christians; the requirements for citizenship should be raised and more clearly be coupled with high degrees of societal integration; citizenship can be recalled if the person lied on their application or if they joined a terrorist organization; police training can be paid in some cases; legal parameters for crime fighting should be widened and that it should be made illegal to join a criminal organization.

SD’s group leader (soon to be ex-group leader) Mattias Karlsson raved that only SD could save the country. “The situation for Sweden is a total catastrophe. Sweden is, seriously, in a do or die position” (SvD.se/congress).

19 sep. – Shekarabi’s immigration play on fb

civilminister Ardalan Shekarabi
pic: gp.se

Ardalan Shekarabi might post as “a social democrat” on facebook, but he’s actually Minister for Public Administration (civilminister), not some random self-identified voter on the internet. Therefore it’s no featherweight suggestion he makes there that Sweden needs “a sustainable immigration policy and to keep the number of new immigrants low” ().

His facebook post reflects the split in the Social Democratic party regarding immigration, with several prominent persons expressing themselves rather in favor of a more restrictive immigration. As SvD notes, the youth wing of the party, SSU, came out in favour of an EU-wide immigration policy, stating that Sweden can’t be the only country taking asylum responsibility (). The thinktank Tiden has asked prominent Social Democrat, and Norrköping City Council member, Lars Stjernkvist, to formulate a future immigration policy in which the dreaded word “volume” is discussed ().

Shekarabi writes that “extreme segregation” is a threat to social cohesion, and that he would like to create “an inclusive national identity.”

This comes at almost the same time as the government has decreed (today) that new immigrants who decide for themselves that they want to live in a “socially vulnerable area” – IOW an area that is populated largely with immigrants who are low on the socioeconomic scale – will lose their daily social allowances (dagsersättning) from the government ().

The Liberal party immigration spokesperson Fredrik Malm remarked that there are problems of extremely crowded living and segregation associated with these areas: School children, for example, can’t concentrate on their studies when they live in crowded conditions. If new immigrants live in state-run institutions, it is easier to reach them and provide social services, it is argued ().

However, no one has suggested actually revoking the Law of Own Accommodation (EBO-lagen – lagen om eget boende), that was begun in 1995 and allowed new immigrants to establish themselves wherever in the country they wanted. Quite naturally, this turned out to be where they found others from their country, and where they didn’t feel so alone. This has turned out to be city suburbs, and the rest is segregation history. In many respects, these areas are economic grey areas anyway, and it is unsure whether the threat of taking away allowances is going to have any effect.

Meanwhile, Shekarabi’s post may only be his way of jockeying for a better position in the race to succeed Löfven as party leader. As Rahm Emanuel said to Obama in the beginning of Obama’s first term as president, at the height of the 2008 economic crisis, “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste” (nyti.ms/NYTimesBiggestCrisis).