As reported by The Local last week, the opposition parties are hoping to vote down several key parts of the law when it goes before parliament on Thursday, meaning the government risks a defeat on the last voting day of its parliamentary term.
"People are going to be given the choice of having an abortion or getting deported," Tony Haddou, an MP for the Left Party, said in a debate on Wednesday over the law. "That's the truth about this."
The law will require those extending a residency permit on the grounds of family reunion to meet maintenance and housing requirements, meaning, among other things, that if a family has another child they risk no longer meeting the requirements.
This same point was made this week on social media by both Centre Party migration spokesperson Niels Paarup-Petersen, and Green Party migration spokesperson Annika Hirvonen.
Migration Minister Johan Forssell argued that the way the opposition had united over the bill showed that the Social Democrats' claim to support stricter migration could not be trusted.
"Now the same parties that once led us into the refugee crisis say that we should return to exactly the same policies that led us into it," he said. "I want to start by congratulating both the Left Party and the Green Party on this because it is obvious that you who are setting the direction here and the Social Democrats who are following in your wake.
Moderate Party MP Viktor Wärnick, when it was his term to speak, protested against what he described as a "loathsome" level of debate.
"It is reasonable to support your family if you want them in Sweden. Paarup-Petersen's style of debate should not be taken seriously and he should be ashamed of it," he said.
Annika Hirvonen, immigration spokesperson for the Green Party, defended the opposition's choice of rhetoric.
"MP's for the Tidö [government-supporting] parties thought we were being overly dramatic when we pointed out that this means that a woman who becomes pregnant will be faced with the choice of having an abortion or facing deportation. But that is exactly what women will be faced with under these new rules," she said. "And we have to warn about the unreasonable consequences of the government's bill."
The fact that families risk deportation if a parent loses a job or the parents have another child was, she said, "the most cynical" part of the new law.
Ola Möller, an MP for the Social Democrats said that the the way the law had been framed risked hitting families hard if they, for instance lose their job or having another child.
"This policy is cruel," he said. "It builds deportations into the legislation itself as a recurring element."
Moderate Party MP Viktor Wärnick argued that by pushing against the new maintenance requirement for permit renewals, the Social Democrats were making Sweden a more attractive country for migrants.
"It's important to bring in these new requirements so that Sweden does not become a more attractive country to try to get to than other EU countries," he said.
The Social Democrats, he said, was pushing for the same sort of policies as the Spanish ones which had led to the crisis earlier this month in Ceuta.
"Here the Social Democrats are doing the same thing with the activists in the Left Party and the Green Party to increase the pull factor."
The opposition has filed joint motions to remove the maintenance and housing requirements for renewals from the law, and also to cut the proposed waiting time for family reunion from two years to one year.
For the opposition's motions to pass, they will need to win the support of at least two of the four Liberal Party MPs who have decided not to stand for reelection due to their party's decision to share a future government with the far-right Sweden Democrats.
Hirvonen told The Local last week, she was hopeful of winning this support.
"It's going to be very much up to the strength of these people's consciences and whether they can withstand pressure from their parties. It will, after all, be for some of them the very last vote of their entire political careers."
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