EDITORIAL • Sweden has often been accused of being naive in its migration policy — so for many, the problems hardly came as a surprise. Already in the autumn of 2010, when the Sweden Democrats entered the parliament for the first time, Kent Ekeroth presented one of his most important proposals: tougher legislation on deportations.

The proposal consisted of eight concrete motions on how the rules should be changed. For a long time, however, these initiatives were met with resistance from the other seven parliamentary parties. The resistance lasted for several years and continued until the change of power after the 2022 election, when the Sweden Democrats, together with three other parties, initiated the Tidö collaboration.

READ MORE: Ekeroth: “Deport more — introduce retroactive deportations”

It thus took twelve years before the course was changed. During that period, both the Moderates, Social Democrats, and several other parties presented a range of arguments to defend a policy that in practice made it difficult to deport individuals without Swedish citizenship.

Today, however, the situation has changed. Several of the proposals Ekeroth put forward in 2010 have now become part of the government’s policies.

Residence permits for people who are not Swedish citizens should be regarded as a privilege, not an unconditional right. Anyone who commits a crime thereby puts this right at risk. The state’s foremost responsibility is to protect society from people who may commit new crimes, and therefore there is reason to review the possibility of applying tougher rules even to older cases.

In several Western countries, legal precedents show that such an arrangement can be consistent with the legal system, and Swedish inquiries have also touched on the issue. Against this background, the government cooperation within the Tidö Agreement should, along these lines, consider allowing deportation decisions to also cover individuals who previously escaped deportation due to older and more restrictive legislation.

If the rules for revoking citizenship are tightened, this line of reasoning could also become relevant in such cases.

Watch Kent Ekeroth’s editorial in video format here: