STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Sweden granted the lowest number of residence permits to asylum seekers and their relatives on record in 2024, a boost for the right-wing government which pledged on Friday to keep bringing the number down further.
Sweden’s minority government and its backers, the far-right and anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, won the 2022 election on a promise to keep reducing immigration and gang crime, which they say are linked.
Since then it has introduced and proposed several measures to make Sweden less attractive to immigrants, such as making it harder to become a citizen and gain residence permits, less generous rules for bringing family members to Sweden and slashed the number of UNHCR quota immigrants accepted.
According to Swedish Migration Agency data 6,250 asylum seekers and their relatives were given residency permits in 2024, down 42% compared to when the government came into power and the lowest number since comparable records began in 1985.
“I think it will need to continue to decrease,” Migration Minister Johan Forssell told a news conference. “We now have a historically low asylum rate, but that should be put in relation to a number of years when it has been at very high levels.”
The number of people in Sweden, who were born abroad has doubled in the past two decades to about a fifth of its 10.5-milion population.
The country recorded a peak of just over 86,000 granted asylum related residency permits in 2016, the year after the migration crisis when 163,000 people sought asylum in Sweden, the highest number per capita in the EU.
Since then Sweden has reversed generous immigration policies, fueled by the rise of the Sweden Democrats, which first made it in to parliament in 2010 but in the last election won 20.5% of the vote to become the second-biggest party.
The policies have drawn harsh criticism from human rights groups, which say that the government is falsely making immigrants responsible for Sweden’s problems and risking eroding civil rights and protections.
The government is actively encouraging immigrants to return to their home countries and has earmarked 3 billion Swedish crowns ($269.18 million) for repatriation grants. Starting next year immigrants to Sweden can get 350,000 Swedish crowns to return, up from the current 10,000 crowns.
($1 = 11.1451 Swedish crowns)
(Reporting by Johan Ahlander; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
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