Britz, one of the most senior figures in the Liberal Party, criticised the Moderates and Sweden Democrats in particular for their tone on immigration saying it is “deadly” for Sweden and risks scaring away highly skilled migrants.
“They’ve cast the whole issue of immigration in a worse light than it should be as far as the Liberals are concerned,” he told the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper in an interview. “Now we need to focus on attracting talent, international key talent, who can choose between Sweden, Singapore, London and New York.”
Sweden needs, he said, to “show we are a country open to that type of immigration."
“The policy around asylum migration should remain the same, but we need to change focus,” he added.
The Moderates – one of the Liberal Party’s coalition partners – as well as the Sweden Democrats, who support the current government, were both to blame for the harsh tone, he said, as well as the opposition Social Democrats who led the previous government.
“The problem now is that people see Sweden as a country which is negative towards all kinds of immigration, and that’s deadly for a small country dependent on other countries, which is home to some leading global companies and organisations,” he said, while adding that the current rhetoric on immigration risks damaging Sweden’s image abroad.
“The way we talk about immigration and openness today is not seen as welcoming of people from other countries. These are people who we want to feel welcome in Sweden, like highly-skilled labour migration,” he added.
Britz told SvD that if the so-called Tidö parties – the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals, with the support of the Sweden Democrats – win the election in September, then his party will work to make Sweden more attractive to foreign talent. One of his proposals is to introduce a new government agency which would take over responsibility for work permits from the Migration Agency.
“This is an agency which, unlike the Migration Agency, would be responsible for making it easier for people to come to Sweden, finding people at the best universities, among the most skilled clusters of knowledge worldwide, marketing Sweden as a great place to work,” he said.
The Migration Agency, on the other hand, would be responsible for handling asylum-related cases as well as cases regarding other kinds of residence permit in Sweden.
“Their task is not to attract people to Sweden,” he said. “Seeing as those tasks are so different, we believe that a different agency should be responsible for this.”
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