Sweden's Mass Immigration Bellwether
Globalists continue to try and fit square economic widgets into triangles
This NYT article on Sweden’s ongoing problems with mass immigration is a perfect example of the cosmopolitan view of the world. Their globalist ambitions are only thwarted because of nascent populations who won’t accept the grand plans.
Sweden was for decades one of the most open and welcoming nations in the world, to the point where its foreign-born population stands at about 20 percent. Now it is among the most restrictive. By hardening asylum requirements and creating an unfriendly atmosphere for new arrivals, it has significantly stemmed the flow of migrants. Arrivals have fallen year over year. Not satisfied, the government has cooked up new schemes to induce migrants already in the country to leave, offering a $34,000 payment per adult. In much less than a generation, Sweden has gone from safe haven to citadel.…The story, on its face, may seem a simple one: After being overwhelmed by an influx of asylum seekers from Syria and other war-tossed Middle Eastern countries in 2015, the country sought to assert control over its borders and its population.
The story is a simple one. Western nations are not global terrariums fit for all cultures.
Yet when I traveled to the country this year, I found something much more complicated. There is certainly antipathy toward migrants: In a survey last month, 73 percent of Swedish respondents said immigration levels over the past decade were too high. But that’s of a piece with a society ill at ease with itself. Beset by metastasizing gang violence, stubborn unemployment and strain on its vaunted social welfare system, the country is rife with discontent — a distemper shared by foreign- and native-born alike. The problem with Sweden, it seems, is not migrants. It’s Sweden itself.[Bold added for emphasis]
When 7 out of 10 Swedes recognize mass immigration as an issue, this isn’t complicated, yet the author begins a series of gaslighting attempts to place the blame of unassimilated migrants at their feet.
So it is perhaps not surprising that when more than 160,000 asylum seekers arrived in 2015, a tattered Swedish state struggled to match its welcoming message with material support. And given how many Swedes saw as their birthright the promise that the government would care for them from birth to death, it is equally unsurprising that many of them balked. But I wondered whether that response was not merely to migrants but was also expressive of a deeper frustration with other ways Sweden had changed.
A large group of people from failed states come to a generous social welfare nation and begin taking full advantage of it, thus upsetting the native population. The added crime and mayhem factor didn’t seem to help either.
That sense of hopelessness has fueled the problem that Swedish voters have said is their biggest concern: violent gang crime, in some cases involving young children as perpetrators. The week I was in Stockholm, a trial concerning a particularly gruesome crime dominated the headlines: A teenager allegedly shot and killed a man taking his son to a swimming pool in a rough suburb of Stockholm. Sweden has one of the highest rates of gun violence in Europe; bombings and kidnappings are shockingly common.[Bold added for emphasis]
Spread of gang violence wrecks Sweden's peaceful image
How gang violence took hold of Sweden
Sweden finally publishes new immigrant crime rate data, which shows no surprises
The far-right Sweden Democrats, who surged in popularity and captured more than 20 percent of the vote in the 2022 elections, have seized on organized crime as proof of the perils of migration. Ludvig Aspling, a member of Parliament for the party and its spokesperson on migration, said the rise of violent gangs is “very clearly linked to migration” and the failure of newer migrants to integrate into Swedish society.
“In the past, when we had migrants primarily from Europe and the Balkans, we never needed an integration system or an integration policy,” he said. “We just kept assuming that was going to be the case, even though we’re bringing in migrants from Iraq or Somalia, and obviously they don’t integrate in one or two or even three generations. We have no idea how many generations it’s going to take before people from Somalia become fully integrated.” [Bold added for emphasis]
There is, of course, little evidence to support his contention. In fact, over the past few years some global economists have been using empirical data, like tax returns and immigration records, to establish that newer arrivals in developed countries follow a similar pattern to older ones: The first generation struggles, but their children quickly catch up to those of native-born parents of similar class backgrounds.
Ah yes, the 2nd generations are catching up according to some global economists. Those who have lost loved ones take little solace in these trite financial statistics.
Even some of the immigrants interviewed for this NYT piece admit the solution is remigration, stating the obvious:
“In our country, we would kick them out,” Majid said.
A persistent trope in these Legacy Media articles on mass immigration is to bring up past instances of Northern Europeans immigrating to America. Migrants! They’re just like us!
Europeans may see themselves today as besieged by migrants, but it was not so long ago that their forebears were themselves impoverished migrants, leaving their home countries in great droves to seek fortune, or simply survival, in colonized lands. Between 1850 and 1930, more than a million Swedes crossed the Atlantic to settle in the United States — about one-fifth of the population, the same proportion that, in a neat symmetry, is now foreign-born.
Just not said is while these Scandinavian immigrants faced challenges including language barriers, discrimination, and economic hardships, they did not begin a campaign of organized crime, bombings, and robbery as a result across the upper midwest of the United States. The familiar tenets of culture shared by Europeans remained and gave a foundation for cohesion.
The article closes with the grand theory that all of these issues with mass immigration from incompatible cultures is, yep, Western Civilization’s fault.
In opening itself up to these questions, Sweden is taking a big gamble. It’s also saying something about itself. “Migration is a bellwether phenomenon,” the sociologist Hein de Haas, a leading scholar of migration, told me. “If you look at the bigger picture, isn’t this growing fear of immigrants showing the lack of confidence of Western societies?”[Bold added for emphasis]
Pointing out that migration to Western nations from the 3rd world is a bellwether, actually. Just not the one mainstream wants to hear. It’s an indication that for the most part, it does not, and will not work as a model going forward in the 21st century.
The only lack of confidence for the West is the fortitude to send them back.
I believe the mass migration to the Western developed countries is intentional, planned, funded and once they have social welfare assistance, their behaviors do not vary from the countries they left. Immigration across Europe, US, UK, AU is a different animal than early and mid 20th century immigration. The entire culture of the left has invaded with or perhaps before the people and we, as western society are welfare states, gullible and no real system in place for real assimilation. What is allowed in the West would never happen in the countries where they originate. I believe the big picture is the destruction of the Free Western World; that the ultimate goal is to fill these countries with populations easily controlled. Assimilation, wanting to become a part of the country’s national identity they are immigrating into has been lost as part of our immigration system. This is by design, everywhere. Only now when Europe has been invaded, like the US do we react and say they can’t do this or behave this way etc. Sweden’s socialist economic system cannot support this influx of immigrants, not without making native citizens suffer. Crime rates have gone up world wide, demands for religious freedoms that exceed the bounds of western values and laws have been demanded. The world has become unsafe and this is just what the Globalists want; annihilating educated white, and generational ethnic peoples that contribute to society and fill it with the poor, needy, uneducated. Paris in not the city of lights, it is the city of darkness, of drugs, trafficking and crime. London. I do not hear english until I am on the National Rail. In America we allow naturalized un assimilated citizens to sit in positions of power, lawmakers and Judges…even dual citizenship. But, if we speak out if we call it true we are branded, social pariah, racists, nazis. God forbid it is seen as truth. Trump sees it, we see it, Ireland wants is national identity back, Markel says her biggest mistake was allowing the mass influx of Moslems. Our ancestors, the UK are trying to fight a system we have all followed but have little power to do so. How do we judge someone’s true assimilation? The desire to want to be part of the country they are migrating to? Teddy Roosevelt had his ideas; our greatest threat , I mean the West is one of our own making; we not only let them in, they are now making our laws. Think of Russia, of China, could any Western immigrant achieve this? Call me whatever you want, I am 2nd gen Lebanese from a family that loved America, my father fought in WWII and my grandfather chose July 4th for his birthday. Only English could be spoken. Yes we kept our Eastern Rite Christianity, our food, culture, but we are American. This is what is missing world wide and it is intentional and our lack of preparedness, our goodness, our naïveté are complicit.
When they say the 2nd generation catches up to "native born of similar class" do they mean poor Swedes, or do they mean that 2nd gen Arabs in Sweden are just as poor as third gen Arabs in Sweden.