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Balkan emigrants 'lured' into coming to Sweden

The Local Sweden
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Balkan emigrants 'lured' into coming to Sweden

Many emigrants from the Balkans are being tricked into coming to Sweden for a permanent residence permit that they’ll never get, a problem the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket) puts down to "misinformation" from travel organizers.

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“People are being tempted by misinformation to invest the little capital they have,” said Caroline Henjered of Sweden’s Migration Board (Migrationsverket) to the TT news agency.

Of the ten most common countries of origin for immigrants to Sweden, Serbia comes in fourth, Bosnia sixth and Albania eighth. But the statistics showed that few of the immigrants hailing from these countries actually obtained asylum in the first instance.

According to the board, the Serbian asylum seekers often belong to minority groups that have had a tough life but who have no right to Swedish asylum according to Swedish laws.

Many Bosnians and Albanians are tricked thanks to false information from travel organizers to come to Sweden, promising them that they will be able to obtain asylum when here.

Swedish embassies in the Balkans are trying to get through to local media the correct information regarding the rules about Swedish permanent residence, to avoid this misapprehension.

Now, the migration board’s new director general Anders Danielsson will make moves to rectify the problem.

“Our director general will meet the ambassadors in the countries to look at how we can better get the right information out there, as there is a lot of misinformation,” Henjered said to TT.

TT/The Local/og

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