What happened to the 163,000 refugees welcomed by Sweden in 2015?
Audio 02:30
Young migrants walk on the E45 motorway from Padborg, on the Danish-German border, towards Sweden in September 2015. © SCANPIX DENMARK / AFP
By: Frédéric Faux
6 min
Five years ago, in 2015, a wave of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, among others, arrived on our continent.
Among the recipient countries, Sweden stood out.
The Nordic kingdom in fact hosted 163,000 refugees for ten million inhabitants that year, the highest proportion in Europe.
Five years later, the migration issue has remained at the center of political debate.
Publicity
In the hall of Stockholm train station, an exhibition sponsored by the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, showed photos of Syrians who arrived during the great wave of 2015 a few days ago. They are posing, facing the goal, with the keys to the apartment or house they left in Aleppo, or Idlib.
For Ulrika Nilsdotter, who collects donations for the UNHCR, it was a historic moment: “
There were people everywhere, this station hall was covered with mattresses.
It was the same in all the churches, gymnasiums, hotels, everywhere.
Many of my friends went to this station to help…
”
From the end of 2015, however, Sweden announced a temporary tightening of asylum rules, with the generalization of temporary residence permits, more difficult family reunifications.
In the end, 163,000 people applied for asylum, but what is less known is that 40% of these applications… were refused.
As a result, thousands of refugees are living illegally in Sweden, mostly Afghans.
Anna Lindblad is a lawyer in a legal aid center for refugees: “
I met a man last week who after being refused asylum went to Germany to reapply.
Under the Dublin regulations, he was returned to Sweden.
And in this case he no longer has any rights, even if it is a family with children, because he is no longer considered as an asylum seeker in Sweden.
We have gone from a generous system, with permanent residence permits to a European minimum.
"
For human rights defenders, Sweden has failed in its tradition.
But for Joakim Palme, who chairs an institute responsible for advising the government on these issues, it was the price to pay to preserve the Swedish model.
Because this migratory wave was exceptional by its scale, but also by its composition: “
Of the 80,000
unaccompanied minors who entered Europe that year, more than 33,000
arrived in Sweden.
The system has been pushed to its limits.
And in some cases, for example the school system, the limits have been exceeded.
Our politicians were proud of our generous asylum system, but in the borderless world of Schengen you cannot be more generous than others.
"
Today Sweden receives barely more than 20,000 refugees each year, but this issue constantly stirs the political debate, against the backdrop of the rise of the far right.
The government of Social Democrat Stefan Löfven wanted a new law for August - permanent this one - to regulate asylum.
But he could not get the political parties to agree.
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