Soul-searching in Scandinavia over Syrian refugees

Wow!  This is a very enlightening piece.  And, it’s in the New York Times no less!

Stockholm under siege in May 2013 as Muslim migrants riot. http://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/452746/fourth-night-fires-unrest-stockholm.jpg?w=480&h=270

Swedish counter-terrorism expert:

We are righteous. But sometimes the righteousness doesn’t meet reality.”

Seems that as Sweden opens its doors to Syrians (and the public is expected to stay quiet), in Norway the government is not going to swing its doors open and the “anti-immigrant” political forces are encouraged to discuss their concerns and fears about excessive immigration.  (I wonder did Anders Breivik have something to do with the new-found openness?)

From The New York Times (emphasis is mine):

 THE narrow victory of the left-leaning Social Democratic Party in Sweden’s elections last Sunday marked a broad shift in its politics. But a new coalition government is unlikely to reconsider one of the country’s most challenging policies: its response to the Syrian civil war.

Sweden has taken an open-door approach to people fleeing the conflict, accepting more Syrians than any other European country.

Never mind that Sweden has double-digit youth unemployment. That there have been riots in immigrant neighborhoods in Stockholm. That there is a severe housing shortage for new arrivals. Or that the Swedish Migration Board, which handles asylum seekers, needs a drastic budget increase — almost $7 billion — to cover soaring costs over the next few years.

And never mind that the far-right, anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats won 13 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election, their best showing ever. They more than doubled their seats in Parliament — from 20 to 49 — and are now the third-biggest party in the country.

“We are the moral guardians of the world,” Magnus Ranstorp, a specialist in counterterrorism at the Swedish National Defense College, told me a few days before the election, referring to Swedes. “We haven’t fought a war in 200 years. We are righteous. But sometimes the righteousness doesn’t meet reality.”

As the Syrian conflict has turned into a regional humanitarian crisis, more European countries are accepting Syrian refugees preselected by the United Nations. But apart from Germany, a much larger country, only Sweden is welcoming tens of thousands of Syrians who come on their own and request asylum.

Some 40,000 Syrians have arrived in Sweden since the conflict began. And following a decision to offer permanent residency to all Syrians, Sweden is expecting more than 80,000 asylum seekers in 2014, many of them from Syria.

In its largess, Sweden diverges from countries like Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark, which have taken in far fewer Syrian asylum-seekers — generally granting them only temporary residency — and just several hundred United Nations-sponsored refugees each. Even more dramatic is the contrast with Norway……

There is much much more, read it all.

All of our posts on Sweden (chronicling its death spiral) are here.

Watch for it!  We are going to learn that open borders in a welfare state will result in chaos and ultimately death for the country.

Reminder!  The US is about to welcome tens of thousands of Syrians!

Weekly summary for the week ending September 19, 2014

For a while I was able to post a weekly summary of what was hot here at RRW, but missed it for the last few weeks.

We had a really good week and September is shaping up to be one of our biggest months yet (in seven years).

If you find me repeating things you already know, remember that we welcome new readers every day who are anxious to get up-to-speed on the federal refugee resettlement program.

Here are our top posts this week (you can see the daily top posts in the right hand side bar):

1.  As invasion of Europe continues, Swiss village raises taxes to support one large African family

2.  US State Department:  We are bringing thousands of Syrians out of Turkey to the US

3.  Our Fact Sheet (always makes the top 3)

Here are the top ten countries (excluding the US) from which we received readers.  LOL! I am surprised Switzerland didn’t make it because some readers took umbrage with my characterization of the Swiss and I assumed they were Swiss themselves.

Canada

Australia

UK

Germany

Sweden

Israel  (new to the top ten)

France

Thailand

Netherlands

South Africa

Press mentions:

If you missed it, go here and follow links for my interview by Ginni Thomas at the Daily Caller.   And, go here to see the mention of RRW in an important article at World Net Daily.

Where to find information if you are arriving here at RRW for the first time.

*  See our categories (left hand sidebar)

*  See the tag clouds (right hand sidebar)

*  Also, we have a great search function and since neither the categories nor the tags go all the way back to our first posts seven years ago, use the search function with a few key words.  You might want to first try your city or state to see what we have reported from there over the years.

By the way, our category entitled ‘where to find information’ is filled with reports and documents, but with 289 posts archived there, it is pretty unwieldy now.  All of the weekly summaries we have done so far are in the category simply called ‘blogging.’

If you are a new reader, consider subscribing or follow us on twitter (@refugeewatcher) or facebook (RefugeeInfoResource).  ‘Like us’ on facebook!

And apologies to all who e-mail and comment, sorry if I don’t respond much, there are just not enough hours in my day!

It occurs to me that I do see everyone’s comments to posts because we do screen them (no foul language, no threats), so if you have something you want me to see, I don’t at all mind if you send the link as a comment to a post, even if it’s a little off-topic.

To regular readers, thank you for your continued concern for this very important issue.

One last thing!  I am not eager to spend any time up-dating the look of RRW, first because I am tech-impaired and secondly, because we have been at this for so long, I think readers expect to see the format they are used to.  But, I am willing to hear from you if you think RRW needs to be modernized!