In November 2015, a friend contacted the writer about Refugees Welcome Lidingö, which provided temporary housing for migrants arriving at Stockholm Central Station. The migrants stayed at an old, unused health center while the Migration Agency searched for available facilities, with Arab volunteers available to interpret for Syrians but fewer translators for Dari-speaking Afghans. The writer offered to help as they spoke Persian. While working on policies to reduce migration to Sweden, the writer volunteered with Refugees Welcome. The question of Sweden’s immigration capacity was once considered devastating to ask, but it has become a salient issue due to the negative consequences. The writer argues that limiting immigration does not contradict offering help to those in need. There is a physical and social limit to the number of migrants Sweden can accommodate, but it remains controversial to acknowledge that immigration from the third world brings problems to Sweden. Carola, a volunteer for Refugees Welcome, was criticized for her xenophobic comments about immigration’s negative impact on Sweden. The writer argues that it is crucial to address the negative consequences of immigration policy, such as extended families living in poverty, gang formation, and language barriers. The writer’s friend, who initially supported refugees, eventually agreed with the need for reduced asylum immigration.
In November 2015 I received a call from a friend, she had started Refugees Welcome Lidingö which ran a transit accommodation for migrants arriving at Stockholm Central Station.
The migrants slept over in the old disused health center for a few days while the overburdened Migration Agency tried to find places for them in one of its facilities. My friend had plenty of Arab volunteers who could interpret for the Syrians – but there were fewer people who could translate for the Dari-speaking Afghans.
Since I speak Persian, I stood up. For Refugees Welcome. I know, I’m burning all my political credibility like evil itself here.
At the same time, during the day, Johan Forsell, Elisabeth Svantesson and I sat in a small room in the same corridor as Anna Kinberg Batra and produced policies on an assembly line for the Moderates, to reduce migration to Sweden.
My point is that there is no contradiction between offering a stranger a helping hand with a roof over their head on a freezing Swedish November night and at the same time, on a systemic level, trying to curb migration as much as possible.
The question of how much immigration Sweden can tolerate had few official answers from our thinkers before 2015. In fact, the question was even considered devastating to ask.
But despite persistent fine-tuning by the writing class, we finally got an answer to how much immigration Sweden can practically handle when migrant children were made to sleep on the hard floor in the Migration Agency’s reception and asylum seekers in Malmö were sent out into the chilly November darkness.
On November 24, 2015, even the Green Party’s Åsa Romson admitted, crying at a press conference, that immigration, unlike Sweden, had a hard limit.
Since then, celebrity appeals for more migration have become increasingly rare in the debate pages of newspapers.
Maybe they’ve come to new insights, maybe it’s not as much fun to signal one’s virtue when people are sitting with facts about the negative consequences.
For the growing number of immigrant parents who are unable to support themselves, the lack of Swedes in their children’s growing up environment, the material and spiritual need it brings and the cultural ghettoization in its wake have an obvious connection to the high level of immigration.
The more obvious this development becomes to neighbors and acquaintances, the more important it is to deny it.
That there was a physical limit to the number of migrants is now an established truth, that there is a social limit to the number of migrants, however, still seems to be controversial.
It is a remaining taboo to point out that immigration from the third world seems to bring with it problems that Sweden is ill-equipped to face.
It was this taboo that Carola broke in her interview with Svenska Dagbladet. There she went from the Carola who voluntarily received migrants on behalf of Refugees Welcome to being in despair about Sweden’s development.
TT and subsequent newspapers ran with the headline “Carola blames immigrants for shootings” – but sorry, when politicians, thinkers and researchers state unemployment as the cause of shootings, you rarely get to read the headline: “Jerzy blames the unemployed for shootings”.
DN’s Alex Schulman believed that Carola was naive and that these “xenophobic” statements were all too common among neighbors and acquaintances. How dare they disturb his saga about Sweden?
Aftonbladet’s Irena Pozar felt sick to her stomach and stated that even if everyone thinks like Carola these days, that is no excuse. It is especially now that it is important to resist.
What they’re really saying is that Carola and everyone else should shut up about the fact that out there, in that non-novel we call reality, immigration policy has caused an epidemic of impoverished, overcrowded extended families, gang formation, street wars, 14-year-old contract killers , culture of honor, clan rule and zero-language children.
Not only that, they believe that the more obvious this development becomes to neighbors and acquaintances, the more important it is to deny it.
So what happened to my friend who toiled voluntarily in that transit accommodation on Lidingö? Well, she, just like Carola, could no longer deny the consequences of reality and is today in favor of reduced asylum immigration to Sweden.
Hanif Bali is a freelance columnist on Expressen’s editorial page. Read more of his texts here.