The Pitfalls of Revisionism: Sweden’s Migration Policy History
By Hanif Bali
Stockholm – Falsification of history has long been a tool of choice for dictatorships. Case in point, the North Korean regime preposterously claims that double rainbows graced the sky and a new star was lit when the country’s former dictator Kim Jong-Il was born. Such delusions have no place in reality.
Interestingly, it seems that Magdalena Andersson, leader of the Social Democratic Party in Sweden, suffers from similar delusions. In a recent interview with Expressen, she sought to rewrite Sweden’s migration policy history despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
It is worth revisiting the history and setting the record straight. Contrary to Andersson’s attempts to mislead, public opinion polls throughout the 1990s indicated that the majority of voters were in favor of Sweden accepting fewer refugees. Despite this, the S leader has characterized her party’s generous migration policy as a response to the “societal climate”. This explanation conveniently overlooks the fact that the Social Democrats were right there when decisions were made regarding the country’s migration policy.
Even before the 2000s, Sweden had a high level of asylum migration in comparison to its counterparts. This has been acknowledged by the Social Democrats themselves in a recent report from Lawen Redar. During that time, the Swedish asylum policy was governed by the Immigration Agency’s politically appointed board, with the Social Democrats and the Moderates resisting demands for a more generous reception through their “iron axis”.
However, when the Social Democrats required the Green Party’s support to remain in power in 2002, they promised to change the iron axi and agreed to a general amnesty for rejected migrants who were illegal aliens. The amendment was endorsed by the majority of parties in the Riksdag, except the Moderates, paving the way for a significant increase in the number of granted residence permits.
The subsequent years saw the evolution of Sweden’s migration policy under the Reinfeldt government, marking a continuity in liberalization, despite the opposition’s criticism of the tightness of the alliance’s policies. The tension between the parties over migration policy persisted, with instances such as the rejection of an extremely mellow subsistence requirement for family immigration proposed by the Moderates in 2010.
The rancor intensified after the Social Democrats’ victory in 2014 and reached a peak in November 2015 when Sweden’s asylum reception system buckled under extreme pressures, forcing a long-overdue “paradigm shift” in the country’s migration policy.
The crucial difference in this case between the Social Democrats and the other parties involved, is that those parties do not lie about their roles in shaping the migration policy. Sweden deserves better than an opposition leader who plays fast and loose with the truth in the same manner as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
It is time to question the accuracy of such revisionist history. The citizens of Sweden deserve leaders who are upfront about the country’s past and present challenges. It is only by confronting the true narrative of their policies that they can effectively address and overcome their challenges.