Look, I agree the tone wasn't appropriate, but while there are statistics that show that Sweden has migratory problems, there are also statistics that show that the problems aren't really that severe. It's true that Sweden is, at the very least, strained, but it's not a collapsing third world economic hellhole. Sweden still scores quite well in GDP and GINI and does it with sucky natural resources, as has always been the case in Scandinavia, save for oil. The Sverigesradio link warpus provided isn't just critical of the situation in Sweden, it also displays a number of proposed solutions to try and fix the problems, all of which are quite reasonable. The "Theglobeandmail" link reads really awkwardly and I'm unsure why warpus is buying into the rhethoric because it's really manipulative. While they provide some dark statistics, it arbitrarily dismisses Malmö as a nonsolution,
The immigrant-heavy city of Malmo, just across the bridge from Denmark, is an economic and social basket case.
I understand that she tries to phrase that it just happened, but no, Malmö doesn't just magically happen. Rather than looking into the solutions Malmö has done she just hand-waves it off. That's absurd!
The article also uses the phrases "Sweden’s fantasy" and "Swedish welfare ghettos" rather than... well "Sweden's ideals" or, well, "ghettos" if you insist on using the word.
The article claims that journalists don't report the bad news. Uh, what? The bad news are plentiful here in Scandinavia. Bad news from Sweden are all over the place in Denmark, available in Swedish, actually. Does this guy actually read Swedish news or does he just handpick the stats that circulate the web between rightwingers? He quotes that Sweden has had the highest increase in inequality between OECD countries since the 1980s. Well, that might be partly the fault of immigration, but it's really not just that, it's also that (as far as I know) Swedish equality used to be much higher than the rest of the OECD in the 1980s. As such the statistics are more easily warped.
Lastly, and this is really important, there are plenty of people that are educated in economics in Sweden. Handpicking a Kurdish-Swedish economist is awfully convenient and honestly, well, manipulative. Why not talk with the numerous other economists available? Will they all color the palette like that? Do you think the Swedish parliament doesn't consult economists when making policy? And willfully going ad hominem, the guy has migrated from Sweden to Chicago. You understand that people moving to the Americas from Scandinavia usually don't actually favor our political structure.
There's so much emotional spin in that article's rhetorical structure, it's actually contrary to its own ethos. But perhaps that's just me...
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So let's just for a second assume that Sweden is exploding from these costs.
The reason Sweden is strained at all is because of the rest of Europe are, again, bombing and displacing populations in the Middle East while conveniently denying responsibility for the populations in question. European immigration isn't Sweden's fault. Pointing to Sweden to showcase the problem with European immigration policy isn't really productive.
Look, I'm all for you guys arguing that Sweden should set up walls. Sure, they have some bad stats, let them grow more authoritarian to fix it or whatever. But doing that will actually just redirect the streams into the rest of Europe. These displaced populations will not just stop showing up at the doorsteps just because Sweden shuts its doors. These people are fleeing from outright despicable and dangerous living conditions. Wasn't it Lebanon which had like 2 million refugees in a 1 million country? (EDIT I'm sure my stats are off, perhaps even the country I will admit, they were off the top of my head. I just remember it was really bad, somewhere.) Where do you think those guys will go? Magically disappear? Starve to death in a collapsing economy? Have their lives destroyed by going back to where they fled from?
Because the problems in Sweden are not especially because of the money paid per immigrant, it's because of a number of factors besides that. There
are too many immigrants, even without our assumption. But migrant populations automatically end up as bottom feeders in whatever economies they end up in. This prevents them from moving anywhere on the social ladder. At the same time they can't afford much because of their socioeconomic standing so ghettos naturally grow. Low skill jobs are already in very low demand in developed European economies and natives favor hiring natives. All of this creates a positive feedback loop, which segregates the populations in question. Sweden actively works against all these things, and there are plenty of statistics that showcase that these policies are succesful, still, there is a lot of work to be done, and if anything that would be because of the sheer magnitude of it.
(EDIT: The point is, the above outlined problems are what I think is the problems with migrant populations in all of Europe, the point was to showcase why migration can be a problem to begin with, to demonstrate this would not be unique to Sweden. Read on for the point.)
So, Sweden doesn't work. Let's handpick from the new Danish political developments, assuming that's the way forward, exemplified in the Theglobeandmail article warpus posted. Denmark's new policies in regards to immigrants, lowering the subsidies for immigrants to the degree we do, actively produces an alienated, impoverished (due to the cost of living), offcut, segregated population, unable to speak the language and compete on the job market. Often there's huge resistance to constructing public mosques for example, native Danes think this will hinder Islamization or whatever, but what it actually just does is to keeping the segregated population's religious practices well and hidden in cellars. Denmark's money-saving policy is producing a segregated, disenfranchised, empoverished population that cannot compete with the native population on a fundamental level and is growing in size.
And you say Sweden's policies are a recipe for problems.
The argument that Sweden should tighten up the same way Denmark does - and that everyone in Europe should follow accordingly, because that's really the only reason you guys discuss some obscure Scandinavian state to begine with - isn't very good. Because it will create several disenfranchised, possibly angry population pockets all over Europe.
(EDIT: True to my usertitle, that was a little messy post. I hope some of you can collect the pieces, I'm not good at being concise.)
