If there’s one thing most Swedish parties agree on it’s that immigration is unpopular, and that the only way to win votes on the subject is to crack down on it, in almost all its forms.
Evidence of this has been on ample display in the past week. The government has been defending the systematic deportations of the teenage children of permanent residents when they turn 18, often in the middle of their studies.
We’ve seen the same pattern on countless other issues: people who came to Sweden as asylum seekers but who are now gainfully employed on work permits are being kicked out, as soon will many people who came on work permits but now earn less than 37,000 kronor, after the government upped the threshold.
And now the clampdown on citizenship: would-be citizens will have to take language and civics tests, and be forced to wait eight years (instead of five) before applying. This will apply however well-integrated they are and however much they’re contributing by working and paying taxes.
Yet now for the first time we’ve seen both Moderate ministers and leading Social Democrat ministers wobble: Migration Minister Johan Forssell has been forced onto the defensive; the Social Democrats have now been dragged kicking and screaming into opposing the deportations.
You can see why these two parties look uneasy. On the one hand the 2015 refugee crisis casts a long shadow over Swedish immigration policy. It turbocharged the Sweden Democrats’ poll numbers and led the traumatised Moderates and Social Democrats to vow never to return to Sweden’s liberal immigration policy.
But there are good reasons for a rethink: most Swedes are actually quite keen on immigrants who work, pay taxes and behave themselves. Attitudes to labour migration remain overwhelmingly liberal, while tolerance of immigrants who misbehave is very limited.
According to research conducted by Gävle University in 2024, 76 percent of Swedes agreed that “foreign labour is needed to secure public services”. Only 9 disagreed. 72 percent agreed that “foreign labour is needed to improve the country’s competence levels”. Only 8 percent disagreed. In the survey, which is carried out every two years, the numbers favoring labour migration had increased on every occasion since 2016.
The vast majority of all Swedes (86 percent) had positive experiences of working or studying with people with foreign backgrounds.
Even a slim majority of Sweden Democrat voters (52 percent) said that their experiences have been positive.
These figures should give Forssell pause, given the constant barrage of headlines about nurses and computer programmers being packed off on deportation flights. The current line that they’ll have to leave the country, then reapply from abroad to get back in, risks offending voters’ ideas about fair treatment of foreigners they meet in their workplaces, schools and communities.
There’s still plenty of scepticism towards some aspects of immigration: 47 percent agree with the statement that “many people with foreign backgrounds come to Sweden just to exploit social benefits” (32 percent disagree). 61 percent agree that “anyone with a foreign background who commits a crime should be forced to leave the country.”
Swedes are also keen on stricter citizenship rules: a record 39 percent think it’s too easy to get Swedish citizenship (only 19 percent disagree, the rest are unsure).
But I wonder whether most Swedes reflect on the fact that getting citizenship is important for the highly-skilled labour immigrants they want to come here. Our reader Rahul, who lives in Gothenburg and works in tech, was typical of respondents when he explained why citizenship was important to him: “It represents long-term security, predictability, and trust.”
Would most Swedes really object to people like Rahul getting citizenship sooner? After all, 66 percent agree with the statement (and only 20 percent disagree) that “only people who behave themselves (‘sköter sig’), get a job and don’t over-use the social security system” should be able to be Swedish citizens.
What Swedes show they’re opposed to is not immigration; they’re opposed to immigration that doesn’t benefit them.
I suspect most of our readers would argue that they do benefit Sweden: they behave themselves, they pay handsomely into the Swedish public purse. They think they should be treated with greater respect. That means not being made to wait eight years to become citizens – and not being subjected to endless uncertainty and rule changes.
Most people understand why Sweden wanted to reduce the number of asylum seekers after 2015, but immigrants who are working and funding the Swedish welfare system think they deserve better than to be cast into uncertainty. Many Swedes seem to agree. Sweden’s politicians should pay heed.
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