Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

IMMI

Should refugees get only ‘temporary’ permits?

A proposal to offer only temporary residency for asylum seekers by Sweden's largest opposition party, the Moderates, was met with widespread criticism on Friday, including from its own youth wing.

Published: 8 May 2015 12:03 CEST
Should refugees get only 'temporary' permits?
Moderate leader Anna Kinberg Batra presenting the proposal on Friday. Photo: Sören Andersson/TT

The centre-right Moderate party presented the controversial proposal at a press conference on Friday morning. A similar bid was flouted by the Christian Democrats in December last year, and also enjoys the support of Sweden's Liberal Party.

Most asylum seekers who arrive in Sweden would be entitled to temporary residency under the proposed plan.

The bid proposed replacing the current practice of offering permanent stays to refugees. However, the Moderates argued that permits could become permanent if the person landed paid employment, or after three years if a variety of conditions were met.

"The purpose is to improve the routes to getting established in society. If you have the right to asylum you will be given temporary residency and if you are offered work it could become permanent," Moderate party leader Anna Kinberg Batra told reporters on Friday.

The move strongly contrasts with the approach of her predecessor and former prime minister of Sweden, Fredrik Reinfeldt, who consistently defended permanent residency permits.

"If you're new in the country you should be set on staying," Reinfeldt told newspaper Dagens Nyheter in an interview at the end of 2014.

READ ALSO: Who's who in Swedish politics?

Sweden's asylum policies are a hot topic in the Nordic country, which accepts more refugees per capita than any other of its European neighbours. Anti-immigration party the Sweden Democrats became the third-biggest party in September's general election, scoring a record 12.9 percent of the vote.

The current centre-left government is in favour of keeping permanent permits.

Several commentators hit out at the Moderate's proposal on social media on Friday. The Swedish branch of children's rights organization Save the Children ('Rädda Barnen') wrote on Twitter: "Temporary residency permits? We have long been critical [of this]. A lot can happen in a child's life over the course of three years."

And a member of Sweden's Green Party, which is part of the ruling centre-left coalition with the Social Democrats, wrote: "Changing to temporary residency permits makes integration more difficult. It only leads to insecurity about whether or not you can start life here for real."

The Moderates, who are part of Sweden's right-wing Alliance alongside the Centre Party, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats, faced criticism from its own camp as well. The party's youth wing, 'Moderata ungdomsförbundet' (MUF), said it would fight the proposal.

"We should not meet people who are fleeing with the threat of going home. We should welcome them with jobs and integration. Europe gets better from greater openness and Sweden should not meet that by tightening the strap," MUF chairman Rasmus Törnblom told SVT.

But another member of the youth organization said she was in favour of the notion, tweeting: "Temporary residency permits are a responsible proposal. Sticking my neck out and congratulating M & my friends in MUF who support this."

Sweden became the first European country in 2013 to grant automatic residency to Syrian refugees and has since seen asylum requests rise to record levels, which are still expected to reach about 90,000 in 2015.

To cope with an increasing flow of refugees, the Swedish Migration Board announced in March that it was more than tripling the maximum number of residents allowed at asylum centres from 200 to 650.

For members

2022 SWEDISH ELECTION

How would the Moderate Party change life for foreigners in Sweden?

The Moderate Party's election manifesto is the longest of all Sweden's eight political parties, and is positively crammed with policy proposals. Here are the ones that affect foreigners in Sweden.

Published: 31 August 2022 15:44 CEST
How would the Moderate Party change life for foreigners in Sweden?

You can read the whole manifesto, This is how we bring order back to Sweden (Så får vi ordning på Sverige), here.

How will foreigners hoping to move to Sweden be affected? 

It would definitely get more difficult, with the Moderates planning to reduce asylum migration “the same levels as Denmark and Norway”, which given how hard it has become to get asylum in Denmark should mean quite a substantial tightening of migration rules. 

The party is promising to tighten up asylum laws to minimum level allowed under EU rules, roughly matching the proposals made by the populist Sweden Democrats on Wednesday. 

The party is also pledging to abolish the current spårbyte or “track change” system, which allows those who claim asylum in Sweden and get rejected to instead apply for a work permit.

How will foreigners newly arrived in Sweden be affected? 

Once foreigners have arrived in Sweden, the Moderates are proposing making it much more difficult for them to access financial support from the government. 

The party is pledging to demand that newly arrived immigrants be denied unemployment payments and other benefits until they have qualified for them by working and paying a certain amount of tax. 

The party also proposes to punish immigrants who fail to meet the ‘individual knowledge goals’ set by their Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) teachers by stripping away part of their benefits payments. 

In the manifesto, it says that all “newly arrived” immigrants, or nyanlända, will have to go through mandatory “community orientation” or samhällsorientering, which will focus on Swedish values, with a section on LGBT rights and gender equality. Elsewhere, the party has said this is only for asylum seekers, so it may be that this does not apply to all immigrants. 

Passing a test on Swedish culture and society will be essential for those applying for citizenship. 

The party is also demanding that foreigners wanting to obtain a coordination number appear in person. 

How will foreigners with families be affected? 

Asylum seekers who come to Sweden will have to go through a mandatory process of “honour crime screening” to make sure they do not limit the freedom of or otherwise oppress family members for religious or cultural reasons. 

If they do, they risk falling foul of a new crime, “illegal limiting of freedom”, which the party hopes to bring in during the next mandate period. 

Foreigners with three-year-old children will have to send them for a language screening to make sure that they speak adequate Swedish, and if they don’t, the three-year-olds may be sent to a mandatory ‘language kindergarten’. 

Foreigners who are worried about having their children taken into care by Swedish social services (as some are) will probably have additional cause for concern. The manifesto promises to “make sure that more [people, children] are taken into care under LVU (Lagen om Vård av Unga)”. This is the law under which social services can take children into care.  

“Children who grow up in criminal clans”, will also automatically be taken into care under the party’s proposals, while the “clan members” themselves will be deported. 

Foreigners with big families could also take a hit from the proposal to remove extra child benefit, flerbarnstillägg, after a family’s fourth child. 

How will unemployed foreigners be affected? 

Foreigners who are unemployed look likely to have a tougher time, as the Moderates propose bringing in a “welfare cap”, so that the total amount of welfare payments a person gets can never exceed what they would earn in a job. 

The party also proposes allowing raids on the houses of people living on benefits “to find malpractices”. 

The party also proposes a “full time activity requirement”, for anyone getting government support, meaning benefits recipients must be either studying full time, applying for jobs full time, or else carrying out useful tasks organised in their local area. 

How will those living in Sweden on work permits be affected? 

The party has promised to “stop talent deportations”, or kompetensutvisningar, but does not give any details over how this will be done. 

How will foreigners wanting to live in Sweden permanently be affected? 

The party wants to bring in language requirements for permanent residency and citizenship. 

It also wants to make passing a test on Swedish culture and society mandatory for those applying for citizenship. 

How will foreigners who get into trouble with the police be affected? 

Anyone holding foreign citizenship in addition to or instead of Swedish citizenship risks becoming a second-class citizen under the law in the Moderates’ proposals. 

The party is proposing to deport anyone with foreign citizenship who commits a crime that comes with a prison sentence. 

Foreigners might want to be careful who they hang out with, as any suspected gang members who aren’t Swedish citizens will be deported, “even if they are not found guilty of a crime”.

Anyone without Swedish citizenship who commits an honour crime, presumably including the new crime of “illegal limiting of freedom”, can be deported. 

How might the Moderate Party improve foreigners’ finances? 

The manifesto is chock full of proposals to cut taxes and help ward off the worst impact of the current cost of living crisis. 

The party is promising to cut income tax, although it doesn’t say by how much, and to create a system that adds up tax rises and tax cuts to ensure that the overall tax burden does not increase over the mandate period. 

Foreigners with share portfolios will benefit from the party’s proposals to cut the tax on ISK individual share accounts (Sweden’s version of an ISA). 

The party is also promising to cut the price of petrol and diesel and to bring in “high cost protection” for electricity prices, meaning consumers’ electricity bills will be subsidised by the government if the power price rises above a certain level.

How might the Moderate Party help foreigners who own businesses? 

The party is rather ambitiously promising to remove “three quarters of red tape and admin costs” for companies, which, if you believe it is possible, will certainly help foreign business owners. 

What else do they want to do? 

Here are some of the other proposals we picked out of the document: 

  • Allow shop owners to bar unwanted customers 
  • Create a ‘job bonus’ for long term unemployed who get a job
  • Cut tax for pensioners, and bring in a system which gives pensioners extra money during periods of strong economic growth
  • Remove tax on incinerators generating heat and power 
  • Increase punishment for welfare fraud and set up a welfare fraud unit at Sweden’s benefits agency
  • Stop paying out benefits to extremists
  • Allow police and social services to share more information 
  • Set up a national programme to help people leave criminal gangs
  • Increase punishment for violent and sexual crimes
  • Get rid of reduced punishments for under-18s, and those committing multiple crimes 
  • Make sure there are 10,000 more police by 2028 
  • Spend more on police salaries, and pay off student loans from those who study to be police officers when they start work 
  • Increase number of CCTV cameras
  • Make membership of a criminal gang a crime
  • Double punishments for gang members 
  • Triple minimum punishment for weapons crimes to six years 
  • Stop all welfare payments to gang members 
  • Seize luxury goods held by gang members if they can’t show how they paid for them
  • Allow long-term use of electronic ankle bracelets for persistent criminals
  • Automatic life sentence for murders in close family relations 
  • Consider setting up youth prisons and reduce age where you can be punished 
  • Change long-term goal of energy policy from 100 percent renewable to 100 percent fossil free 
  • Change regulation of nuclear power, removing requirement reactors can only be built on site of existing ones
  • Tell Sweden’s state-owned power company Vattenfall to look into building new reactor at Ringhals
  • Bring in green credit guarantees for new nuclear, bring in state high-cost guarantee for new nuclear 
  • Reduce the amount of protected woodland that can’t be used for forestry
  • Sell “a large share” of state-owned forest to people connected to local areas 
  • Extra schooling in holidays for children who fall behind 
  • Instruct Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention to survey criminal clans in Sweden 
  • Criminalise clan courts and other parallel justice systems 
  • Ban cousin marriage 
  • Establish special “criminal clan division” within Swedish police
  • Increase military spending to 2 percent of GDP by 2025 
  • Scrap Sweden’s goal that aid spending should be 1 percent of GDP 
  • Strengthen healthcare guarantee for cancer patients, allowing them to get treated in other regions 
  • Work towards a constitutional right to abortion 
  • Make sure pregnant women can have same team of midwives from early pregnancy to post pregnancy 
  • Language requirement for those working in health and elderly care
  • Increase school hours by an hour a day in first three years of primary school 
  • Focus on measurable factual knowledge in schools like Finland does 
  • Reduce requirement for teachers to document their activities 
  • Empower headteachers to intervene when classrooms get rowdy 
  • Bring in new crime of “violence against teachers” 
  • Make it obligatory for everyone to choose a school for their children 
  • Give Swedish Schools Inspectorate power to shut schools which lead to segregation and radicalisation 
  • Create a common municipal queue system which includes free schools
  • Scrap plans for high-speed rail 
  • Expand Arlanda airport to make it leading airport in the north 
  • Get rid of protection of coastal areas so new houses can be built on beaches and lakesides 
  • Tighten up responsibility for public officials 
  • Make LGBT and gender equality a crucial part of community orientation 
  • Bring in a “national honour-crime screening” for all asylum seekers 
  • Criminalise virginity tests 
  • Permit unpaid surrogacy in Sweden
  • End limits on blood donation for gay people
  • Ban conversion therapy to change sexual or gender identity 
SHOW COMMENTS