Text Tiina Kirkas

This year Sweden expects to receive 40,000 asylum seekers, approximately half of whom are fleeing from the war in Iraq. The majority come to stay permanently.

Last year the Swedish Migration Board approved 42 percent of all the asylum applications and 80 percent of those submitted by Iraqi nationals. The Board estimates the figures to remain unchanged for the next few years.

In spite of these huge percentages compared to Finland, Sweden doesn´t intend to close her borders, quite the contrary. Just recently the Swedish government raised the refugee quota by 200 to 1,900. Instead, the country demands responsibility from the other EU countries too.

– Over two million Iraqis are fleeing their country and there´s no end in sight to the misery. Most member countries have to show solidarity and increase their support to the work by the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR in the neighbouring areas of Iraq, migration minister Tobias Billström´s advisor Minna Ljunggren hastens to say.

The migration minister, subordinate to the Ministry of Justice, is responsible for refugee and immigration policy, in addition to international collaboration.

Last year Sweden granted residence permits to a total of over 86,400 aliens, including a little fewer than 24,500 asylum seekers, their next of kin as well as quota refugees. Besides, more than 4,400 asylum seekers were provided with a temporary residence permit. On the basis of refugeeism or other such causes, approximately 11,400 Iraqis were granted residence permits in Sweden.

The Swedish Integration Board closes down

The machinery receiving and integrating refugees entering Sweden faces a new situation. Until now the Immigration Board has dealt with asylum investigations, provided asylum seekers with accommodation, returned those to be deported and turned back, supported refugees´ voluntary return migration and handled the administration related to visas, residence permits and issues of citizenship.

From next July on the Board will administer the integration of asylum seekers with a residence permit and quota refugees, when the Integration Board, which has been in charge until now, is abolished to raise administrative effectiveness. However, provincial administrative boards, agreeing on details with the municipalities in their region, take operational responsibility for integration. In terms of the field of integration, the role of labour, educational and other authorities will be specified later.

According to critics, the new system will be introduced at the worst possible time. Authorities estimate the need of municipality placements for new refugees to be 40,000 for next year, but the provision is scanty since several municipalities refuse to receive refugees. Children entering the country alone face the most alarming situation because only 14 of the 290 municipalities in Sweden accept them.

At the end of February about 300 children were waiting in temporary accommodation to be transferred to a home municipality promised to them while around 30 underage asylum seekers, including a large number of Iraqi youngsters, arrive in Sweden every week.

Work and subsistence

What hampers the integration of refugees is that 60 percent of asylum seekers arrange their own accommodation, which means, in practice, staying with their relatives in suburbs of greater Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malmö. After being granted a residence permit the majority stay where they are even though municipalities which have traditionally accommodated a number of refugees haven´t got resources to provide their new residents with proper housing, training or work.

To alter the situation, the opposition would resort to the state supervision. On the other hand, the government neither wants to restrict the rights of asylum seekers to choose their place of residence nor the authority of municipalities to refuse to receive refugees. Instead, the government believes in enlightenment and the refugees´ own ability to seek work and subsistence elsewhere in Sweden.

Indeed, employment is the core of the government integration policy which is endeavoured to be reached by abolishing employer charges for refugees for the three first years. Integration and equality minister Nyamko Sabuni is running an experiment on anonymous work applications in the public sector to prevent discrimination.

Minister Tobias Billström wants to break ground for employment-based immigration.

– People have to be able to enter Sweden more flexibly than today, also in other ways than as asylum seekers. Employers must be able to decide for themselves who they want to hire, Minna Ljunggren outlines her view.