October 22, 2015 1:52 pm
Sweden will receive as many as 190,000 refugees this year, according to official estimates, more than double the projected number envisaged just three months ago, placing unprecedented strains on the country’s immigration services as politicians struggle to agree a way forward.
“It’s as if we have a land border with Turkey,” said Anders Danielsson, head of the Migration Board, as he announced the figures on Thursday.
“The current refugee situation is unprecedented in modern times, and the housing situation is critical.”
At the end of July, the Migration Board said the rate of new arrivals was falling and it expected a total of just 74,000 in 2015. The previous peak number of asylum seekers in Sweden was in 1982, when 84,000 fled the Balkan wars.
The numbers are “not sustainable for Sweden”, said migration minister Morgan Johansson, adding that EU countries must share asylum seekers.
With a total population of under 10m, Sweden is receiving by far the highest number of refugees in Europe as a proportion of its population, equivalent to about 6m people flooding into the US, and third only to Germany and Hungary in absolute terms.
The new estimates come as the country’s politicians are locked in a heated debate over a united response to the crisis. The main Conservative opposition at the weekend overturned its previous stance and demanded that no refugees should be granted permanent residency permits, a right enjoyed by all Syrian asylum seekers at present. There are increasing calls for border controls from within the ruling centre-left coalition itself.
Officials said they expected the country to be short of 25,000 to 40,000 beds by the end of the year. This week the Migration Board opened a temporary camp of 350 heated tents to house refugees, as temperatures dropped towards freezing.
While opinion polls suggest there is still wide support for welcoming refugees, the high numbers, and a new policy of mandatory dispersals around the country, are causing tension, especially in rural communities. There has been a spate of apparent arson attacks on refugee accommodation centres in the past week, which prime minister Stefan Löfven called “an extremely serious and frightening development … Not the Sweden we want to see.”
Last week the far-right Sweden Democrats, polling at almost 20 per cent, launched a campaign to stop all refugees coming to Sweden because “the country is full”.
The EU is struggling to respond to a surge of desperate migrants that has resulted in thousands of deaths since the beginning of the year
The Migration Board estimates that between 140,000 and 190,000 asylum seekers will come to Sweden this year, with the most likely number around 160,000, “depending on weather conditions in the Mediterranean”. Of these, between 30,000 and 40,000 will be unaccompanied children — by far the highest number in any EU country.
Around 52,000 will come from Syria, and 30,000 each from Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2016 a further 100,000 to 170,000 will arrive, the Migration Board said, doubling the cost to the state to between SKr60bn and SKr73bn ($7.2bn and $8.7bn) in 2017.
Sweden has already received more than 100,000 refugees this year, and on Tuesday had a record 1,700 arrivals in one day. Refugees have been arriving at a rate of more than 9,000 each week.
Asked how many might be illegally in the country, Mr Danielsson said: “We have no idea, we have no border.”
“The reliability of our forecasts is low at present,” said Merjem Maslo for the Migration Board. “When the Syrian conflict started we could pretty well determine how many asylum seekers who would find their way here, but our forecast can no longer be based on sound judgment.”