Mass Immigration Impacts Sweden’s Parliamentary Elections

On September 11, Swedish citizens voted in their country’s parliamentary elections. After a few days of suspense, it was finally announced that the center-right bloc had managed to secure an extremely narrow majority in the Scandinavian nation’s unicameral parliament, the 349-seat Riksdag. Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson conceded the election, and will be succeeded as prime minister by Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the center-right Moderate party, who will head a coalition government. Such a coalition would include the Sweden Democrats, who favor increased restrictions on immigration. There is little doubt that mass immigration, and specifically some of its problems and pathologies – including increased crime, a lack of assimilation, asylum abuse, and strains on Sweden’s renowned safety net – played a significant role in the election results.

The Sweden Democrats – led by Jimmie Akesson – have been on an upward trajectory during the past few national elections, almost quadrupling their support since they first entered the Riksdag in 2010. A great deal of teeth-gnashing predictably ensued on the part of various establishment and left-wing, pro-mass-immigration commentators and outlets triggered by the fact that the Sweden Democrats may possibly have some influence on government policy in Stockholm. But the problems stemming from mass migration are not mere figments of the Sweden Democrats’ imagination.

Here are just a few examples of issues Sweden has been experiencing with mass immigration:

• In a 2017 study of shootings that had taken place in Sweden since 2013, the liberal paper Dagens Nyheter found that 90 percent of the convicted or suspected murderers were either foreign-born or the children of immigrants – overwhelmingly from the Middle East or North Africa.

• Things have not changed for the better since then, for, as an August Reuters article points out, according to the Swedish government, “gang crime, fueled by the drug trade, is linked to poor integration of Sweden’s large immigrant community.” As one retired social worker revealed, “I have lived all over Orebro and I used to love this neighborhood, but now I think I may have to get out of here.”

• According to a recent survey, a whopping 79 percent of refugees living in Sweden have vacationed in their homelands, despite claiming supposed persecution in those countries.

• Tino Sanandaji, an economist of Kurdish-Iranian descent (and no fan of the Sweden Democrats), points out that the “foreign-born represent 53 percent of individuals with long prison sentences, 58 percent of the unemployed, and receive 65 percent of social welfare expenditures; [and] 77 percent of Sweden’s child poverty is present in households with a foreign background.”

• In all too many cases, a lack of gratitude to the host nation of Sweden is accompanied by a refusal to assimilate. For instance, the new Nyans (“Nuance”) party made considerable gains during the elections in immigrant neighborhoods. Running on a platform of complaints about perceived Islamophobia and discrimination, Nyans has been described as Islamist and pro-Erdogan.

The not-so-rosy consequences of mass migration are not only noticed by native-born Swedes. A Polish immigrant woman who had been living in a “no-go zone” said that “it’s getting increasingly worse. The drug trade thrives near the metro station and few residents dare to go outside after dusk. Break-ins and thefts happen on a daily basis (…). Shootings and fights between gangs occur.” She added that she is extremely worried about her daughter who takes the metro to school. Thus, a plurality of candidates of Polish immigrant descent running in the 2022 election were Sweden Democrats, followed by Moderates.

The problems described above, in some way, impact practically every Western society now. And for those that aren’t yet experiencing consequences as severe as are occurring in Sweden, the country acts as a grim representation of what is likely to come if unmanaged immigration policies continue. It is likely that Italy’s upcoming September 25 elections will yield similar results to Sweden’s. The only question is whether the new Swedish government will succeed in restoring some sanity to Sweden’s immigration policies, which is what the voters certainly seem to want.