Quarter of a million residence permits, "lowest asylum immigration in 40 years"

At a press conference on Friday, Minister of Migration Johan Forssell (M) made a big deal out of the fact that asylum-related immigration under the current government has dropped to “the lowest since 1985”. Forssell chose not to mention that since the government took office in late 2022, nearly 250,000 residence permits have been granted.

Gone are the days when the Sweden Democrats stood alone in pointing out that mass immigration to Sweden is a burden on society, with the other seven parliamentary parties as angry opponents, claiming that the large influx of migrants was instead an enriching gain and that anyone claiming otherwise is xenophobic and racist.

Already from the Social Democratic-led governments that preceded the current Tidö government, the tone began to change – from “My Sweden does not build any walls” to self-praise for having significantly tightened immigration. The same about-face has occurred in the bourgeois parties that are part of the Tidö government.

Selective reporting of numbers

Minister of Migration Johan Forssell (M) did not feel compelled at Friday’s press conference to explain or justify why it is good that immigration to Sweden is now “historically low“. Instead, it was presented as an equally obvious fact as was previously emphasized in the opposite direction; that Sweden’s historically high immigration is good.

In a selective reporting of the inflow to Sweden, Forssell emphasized that last year only 6,250 asylum-related residence permits were granted in Sweden, the lowest number since 1985. However, the total influx of migrants continues to remain at historically high levels – on the order of five to ten times higher than in the 1980s to which Forssell refers.

Strong asylum pressure on the EU and many illegal immigrants

The government notes that the asylum pressure on the EU countries as a whole remains strong. In contrast to the national figures for Sweden, the trend here is upward. The free movement within the EU also means that a migrant arriving in one EU country can easily move on to another.

Outside the reported statistics are also the illegal migrants residing in Sweden. According to estimates, they may amount to several hundred thousand people.

This mainly concerns individuals who have been denied residence permits and instead of returning home, have gone underground. Others have never come forward to the Swedish authorities.

Still hundreds of thousands of residence permits

Just in 2024, the Tidö government allowed, according to its own manipulated figures excluding the EU’s mass refugee directive, nearly 83,000 new residence permits to be granted. The Migration Board’s official figure including that category is 94,000. Since the government took office, it amounts to nearly 250,000 residence permits.

If you include the year just before, the number of residence permits amounts to nearly half a million. The numbers are so high that more and more people have begun to use “population replacement” as a term for the development. This is because the proportion of Swedes in Sweden is steadily decreasing while the proportion of migrants is steadily increasing.

The most common countries of origin during the mandate period and just before are India, Thailand, China, and Pakistan. The Nordic neighboring countries do not even place among the top 20. However, countries such as Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, Iraq, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Congo do.

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Asylum-related family immigration increased

The government’s claim of historically low asylum-related immigration in 2024 does not correspond with the Migration Board’s statistics.

Total family immigration decreased marginally, from 25,110 granted permits in 2023 to 24,504 granted permits in 2024. However, the number related to “Family member of a refugee/asylum background” increased from 2,114 permits in 2023 to 2,920 permits in 2024.

An even greater increase was noted for the unspecified category “Family member of others”. The figure rose dramatically from 890 permits in 2023 to 4,421 permits in 2024.

133,000 citizenships

From the autumn of 2022 until the end of September last year, the Tidö government also granted citizenship to over 133,000 migrants. The list is topped by individuals from distant countries with documented integration issues.

Most citizenships have been granted to individuals from Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, and Somalia. You have to look far down the list to find a Western country of origin, and even further down to meet one of the Nordic neighboring countries.

During the Tidö government, serious criminals and terrorists have also been granted citizenship. Samnytt has highlighted a number of such citizenship cases. Furthermore, during the mandate period, a large number of serious criminals without Swedish citizenship have been allowed to stay instead of being sentenced to deportation.