Iraqis leave Sweden

300 Iraqi citizens left Sweden in the first four months of 2008. This represents an increase on the 233 Iraqis who returned home in the corresponding period of 2007.

Published: 31 May 2008 09:53 CEST

Migration minister Tobias Billström responded positively to the development.

“Experience has shown that otherwise their situation could have become very bad. The situation in Södertälje and my home town Malmö is such that people live on mattresses,” Billström told the Swedish public radio news programme Ekot.

Billström interprets the trend as that people are starting to consider the security situation in Iraq to have improved, and that they have realised that decisions to reject their applications for asylum are final.