Sweden has unveiled tough new requirements for citizenship as part of tighter immigration rules aimed at integrating migrants and upholding the country’s values.
The government said on Tuesday it wanted to toughen the rules for obtaining Swedish nationality, with a probe recommending ‘honest living’ as a prerequisite.
It also recommended extending the required duration of time spent in the country prior to obtaining citizenship – increasing to eight years from the current five.
Those seeking citizenship would also have to pass a test on Swedish society and values, and do a language exam, according to the government-ordered probe.
‘Citizenship must be earned, not be handed out unconditionally,’ Migration Minister Johan Forssell said in a post on Instagram.
Forssell told a press conference that citizenship also helped tie people of disparate backgrounds together under ‘a common Swedish identity’.
He said it was ‘crucial’ to ‘always be very clear about the values that must apply in Sweden’.
‘Family is important but it does not stand above the law. There is equality between the sexes. You can marry whoever you want.
‘Girls and boys have the right to swim and play football. If you don’t accept that, Sweden is not the country for you,’ the minister said.
Migrants, mainly from Syria, walk north on a highway on September 7, 2015 in the hope of reaching Sweden and seeking asylum there
Sweden has been described as a ‘haven’ for mafia gangs off the back of surging migration. Backlash against immigration has in turn – in the past – led to clashes between groups and Police (pictured), who are swamped with trying to crack down of rising levels of gang violence
Following a large influx of asylum seekers to Sweden during the 2015 migrant wave, successive left- and right-wing governments have tightened immigration and asylum rules.
Sweden stunned the world by taking in nearly 163,000 asylum seekers during the 2015 migrant crisis – the highest number per capita of any EU country.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s centre-right minority government, which is backed in parliament by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, has introduced ever harsher curbs since coming to power in 2022.
Reifying the importance of a ‘common’ identity, Forssell explained: ‘This is particularly important at a time when Sweden has welcomed hundreds of thousands of people from many parts of the world in recent years.’
A probe ordered in 2023 also recommended tightening up the requirement for ‘honest living’.
In concrete terms, this would mean it would be harder for a person who has committed a misdemeanour or a crime, or who has unpaid debts, to obtain Swedish nationality, said Kirsi Laakso Utvik, who led the probe.
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Human rights organisation Civil Rights Defenders was critical of the proposal.
‘Research shows that tougher requirements for citizenship do not increase the incentives for integration, but rather contribute to the exclusion of a growing group of people who find themselves in the country for a long time without the basic rights of citizenship,’ the organisation’s legal director John Stauffer told AFP.
The probe’s conclusions will now be referred to various authorities and concerned parties for review, before the government drafts a bill.
The probe recommended that the new law come into effect on June 1, 2026.
Sweden once considered itself a haven for the war-weary and persecuted but has over the years struggled to integrate many of its newcomers.
Recent measures introduced to reduce immigration included granting of only temporary residence permits to asylum seekers, tightening family reunification criteria and raising income requirements for non-EU citizens seeking work visas.
The number of migrants granted asylum in Sweden dropped to the lowest level in 40 years in 2024, according to the country’s government – the result of a decade-long crackdown on immigration.
Just 6,250 asylum-related residence permits were granted in the Scandinavian country last year, according to Forssell, who cited fresh statistics from the Migration Agency.
That figure does not include Ukrainians, who have been granted temporary protection throughout the European Union.
The number of people who applied for asylum in Sweden in 2024 was 9,645, the lowest since 1996 and down by 42 percent since 2022.
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The huge influx of migrants in 2015 onwards made it impossible to effectively integrate all of the new arrivals, Mr Forssell has now said, with insufficient housing, schools and work opportunities.
The EU has made significant progress in managing the flow of irregular migrants with a sharp crackdown on traffickers, the block’s border agency reported yesterday.
The latest data from the Frontex agency were welcomed by Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, and comes as anti-immigration parties have been performing strongly in elections around Europe.
The Warsaw-based agency said last year’s preliminary data revealed a 38-percent drop in land and sea crossings from the previous year.
It said in a statement the numbers were at ‘the lowest level since 2021, when migration was still affected by the COVID pandemic’.
Frontex said the decrease in undocumented asylum seekers was mainly driven by a plunge in arrivals through routes in the Central Mediterranean – largely via Libya – and Western Balkans regions.
‘Intensified EU and partner cooperation against smuggling networks has significantly reduced crossings at Europe’s external borders,’ Frontex said.
Meloni called it ‘a result of Italy’s action, just as the overall reduction in irregular entries into the European Union, by other routes as well (…) is the result of the hard work that our government has undertaken in recent years’.
She expressed her ‘pride’ in what she hailed as ‘good news of the day’.
Security staff check IDs of travellers from Denmark to Sweden as part of measures to reduce the flow of migrants into the country in 2015
Overall, in 2024 the agency saw over 239,000 irregular entries into the EU.
By comparison, the UK saw a total of 29,061 attempts to enter the UK irregularly between January and September 2024, according to government figures.
This includes small boat arrivals, inadequately documented air arrivals, recorded detections in the UK and recorded detections at UK ports.
This was down from 2023’s tally of 36,699, aggregating the same selected methods of entry.
This was also down from 2022’s figure of 54,672.
It was also significantly lower than 2021’s total of 36,813.
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Publish date : 2025-01-14 23:27:00
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