A few months back, benevolent Sweden (we are the world’s good people!) opened its doors to any Syrian refugees who could make it to their borders, but it now seems that they may have an extreme case of refugee overload and there is consequently a lot of whining going on.
Here is the news at the Global Post (Sweden struggles with the surge). Emphasis is mine:
Sweden, as the only country to give Syrian refugees automatic residence, has struggled to house them and faces warnings of a coming surge in arrivals.
Josef Ariss and his mother Reina fled Aleppo in northern Syria three months ago when their family’s clothing factory was flattened by shelling.
Although relieved to escape the violence, he is far from happy with the situation in Sweden — living in cramped conditions with relatives, like many of his countrymen.
“We’re staying at my aunt’s house — eight people in 90 square metres (900 square feet),” the soft-spoken 20-year-old told AFP.
Speaking at a crowded Syrian cultural centre in the outskirts of Stockholm as new arrivals streamed out of a Swedish language class, he added: “If you need help from the Migration Board to find a place they throw you in the north where it’s far below freezing. We can’t live there.”
14,000 Syrians have arrived in Sweden this year!
“We came here with big hopes of starting over — of having our own place to stay,” she said.
Sweden has seen a sharp increase in Syrian refugees — about 8,000 have arrived since it threw the doors open in September, bringing the total number this year to more than 14,000 — of a total of 50,000 refugees. [The US takes an average of 70,000 refugees* a year, so you can see that Sweden cannot survive this number—ed]
The Migration Board offers everyone temporary accommodation in a growing network of refugee centres scattered around the country.
Refugees in Sweden at 20-year peak with few places to live.
About 8,000 refugees with residence permits live in reception centres, currently having to wait an average of six months for permanent accommodation, according to migration authorities.
The queue is expected to double next year with up to 69,000 more refugees, the highest level since the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
Mayor would like to say NO! Unemployment rate at 14%!!!
In Soedertaelje, the situation has already passed crisis proportions, according to Social Democratic mayor Boel Godner.
[…..]
“If we had the power to check we would say ‘no, it’s too crowded here’,” she said. “Children have it tough at school… learning Swedish when everyone around them speaks the same (foreign) language.”
“And it’s hard to get jobs, which creates a lot of poverty and frustration. Many refugees would be better off if the whole country helped out — there are districts that have not accepted a single refugee.”
Let the whining begin! The rest of the article focuses on finger-pointing. Not all communities in Sweden are doing their fair share, not all countries in Europe are doing their fair share, and it’s all the fault of the “anti-immigrants” in the Sweden Democrats Party who want no more immigration to Sweden (say what?).
Bottomline, it appears, is that the Swedish humanitarians (with a death wish) would have the country crash economically and socially as they pat themselves on the back for being known as the world’s good people.
Photo is from this Radio Sweden story from last December.
* When you add in Cubans/Haitians and Asylees, the US number is actually over 100,000 but officially they say 70,000 “refugees.”