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IMMIGRATION

Balkan emigrants ‘lured’ into coming to Sweden

Many emigrants from the Balkans are being tricked into coming to Sweden for a permanent residence permit that they’ll never get, a problem the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket) puts down to "misinformation" from travel organizers.

“People are being tempted by misinformation to invest the little capital they have,” said Caroline Henjered of Sweden’s Migration Board (Migrationsverket) to the TT news agency.

Of the ten most common countries of origin for immigrants to Sweden, Serbia comes in fourth, Bosnia sixth and Albania eighth. But the statistics showed that few of the immigrants hailing from these countries actually obtained asylum in the first instance.

According to the board, the Serbian asylum seekers often belong to minority groups that have had a tough life but who have no right to Swedish asylum according to Swedish laws.

Many Bosnians and Albanians are tricked thanks to false information from travel organizers to come to Sweden, promising them that they will be able to obtain asylum when here.

Swedish embassies in the Balkans are trying to get through to local media the correct information regarding the rules about Swedish permanent residence, to avoid this misapprehension.

Now, the migration board’s new director general Anders Danielsson will make moves to rectify the problem.

“Our director general will meet the ambassadors in the countries to look at how we can better get the right information out there, as there is a lot of misinformation,” Henjered said to TT.

TT/The Local/og

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IMMIGRATION

France ‘will not welcome migrants’ from Lampedusa: interior minister

France "will not welcome migrants" from the island, Gérald Darmanin has insisted

France 'will not welcome migrants' from Lampedusa: interior minister

France will not welcome any migrants coming from Italy’s Lampedusa, interior minister Gérald Darmanin has said after the Mediterranean island saw record numbers of arrivals.

Some 8,500 people arrived on Lampedusa on 199 boats between Monday and Wednesday last week, according to the UN’s International Organisation for
Migration, prompting European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to travel there Sunday to announce an emergency action plan.

According to Darmanin, Paris told Italy it was “ready to help them return people to countries with which we have good diplomatic relations”, giving the
example of Ivory Coast and Senegal.

But France “will not welcome migrants” from the island, he said, speaking on French television on Tuesday evening.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has called on Italy’s EU partners to share more of the responsibility.

The recent arrivals on Lampedusa equal more than the whole population of the tiny Italian island.

The mass movement has stoked the immigration debate in France, where political parties in the country’s hung parliament are wrangling over a draft law governing new arrivals.

France is expected to face a call from Pope Francis for greater tolerance towards migrants later this week during a high-profile visit to Mediterranean city Marseille, where the pontiff will meet President Emmanuel Macron and celebrate mass before tens of thousands in a stadium.

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