Åkesson: "Asylum-related immigration must be as close to zero as possible"

Until July this year, 97,500 residence permits were granted in Sweden.

Of them, the largest group, around 40,000 people, are people who have fled Ukraine.

The Sweden Democrats have consistently welcomed refugees from Ukraine and still do so today, according to Jimmie Åkesson.

- They are here according to the EU's mass migration directive and they are here to receive temporary protection, he says.

At the same time, the number of residence permits granted is often raised as a problem by Åkesson and his party colleagues.

The message is that the government has broken promises to keep the number down.

Åkesson does not agree that SD themselves would have contributed to the high numbers by welcoming Ukrainians.

- I think you can keep two thoughts in your head at the same time.

We have continued a large asylum immigration and we have an asylum-related immigration in addition to the refugee immigration from Ukraine and that is of course unsustainable in the long run.

Advocating a stop to asylum

The number of asylum seekers who received residence permits during the first half of the year amounted to a group of 5,240 people.

However, that figure does not show the whole truth, says Åkesson, who wants to distinguish between asylum immigration and what he calls asylum-related immigration.

- They can come either as asylum seekers, relatives or job seekers, but it is still the case that they do not end up in anything other than exclusion and dependency on benefits.

Then they become a burden on this country and we can't handle it.

- We should not have more asylum-related immigration from all corners of the world.

That immigration must be as close to zero as possible.

In order to counter the development, the party wants to see what they call an asylum freeze, where asylum seekers are only to be accepted from neighboring countries according to the "first safe country" principle.

Exactly how such a thing could be designed remains to be seen.

- We must apply the minimum level that is possible according to EU law and there are a number of things that have not been done in Sweden, there are additional tools, says Jimmie Åkesson.