During an interview on Sunday on SVT's Agenda programme, Sweden's Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard was challenged over the claim she made at a press conference last month that new statistics showed Sweden was now seeing net migration for the first time in 50 years.
SVT's interviewer Katia Elliott confronted Stenergard with figures from Statistics Sweden which showed that once adjustments to previous years' figures made as a result of ongoing checks on Sweden's population register were stripped out, the country still had net immigration of more than 5,000 people in the first half of the year.
"Is it so important to demonstrate migration policy successes that the government is prepared to use uncertain figures and play loose with the facts?" she asked Malmer Stenergard.
When The Local contacted Statistics Sweden, the agency confirmed that once the 7,700 people reclassified as no longer living in Sweden as a result of checks on the population register were stripped out, only 36,404 people emigrated from Sweden in the first half of the year, 5,035 fewer than the 41,439 people who immigrated over the period.
Malmer Stenergard protested that she had been clear in the press conference that the numbers included people who left Sweden earlier but had been reclassified as no longer living in the country as a result of the checks carried out by the Swedish Tax Agency.
"This does not go against what I said, because I said that this was a result of the government's policies -- partly because of the revamped migration policies, and also because of the tidying up the Tax Agency has done, and I don't understand why they should be excluded, because they are also important," she said.
Interviewer Elliott also challenged Malmer Stenergard on why the government would see it as a success that more people were leaving Sweden than coming, even if it were true.
"We need to have sustainable immigration. We have had much too high immigration to Sweden for much too long, which has resulted in... failed integration," Stenergard replied.
"Now we need to get the level down so we can make sure that people have a real chance to enter into society," she said.
"We now have two million people in the country who were born abroad and one third... cannot support themselves," she added.
Ann-Marie Persson, one of Statistics Sweden's statisticians, confirmed to SVT in an email shared with The Local that emigration had increased between the first half of 2023 and the first half of 2024, even after stripping out the adjustments to the population register, even if it did not yet exceed immigration.
In the interview, Stenergard also reiterated her claim that the government was tightening rules on asylum migration at the same time as making it easier for companies to get the high skilled international workers they need.
"This is no longer a country of asylum immigration as it was for a very long time," she said. "We are now, to a much greater extent, a country of labour migration."
The Local has previously questioned this, however, obtaining statistics from the Migration Agency that showed that Sweden is also seeing a net emigration of Indian citizens -- one of the key groups of work permit holders.
Comments