"This is a four- to fivefold increase compared to 2014," Oscar Ekblad of the Migration Board told Swedish Radio, citing a possible number of unreported cases due to the high workload, as the board's personnel have been running at maximum capacity since last year's unparalleled influx. "We cannot set up a fine-meshed net to sieve through all the immigrants," Ekblad said.
Usually, suspected asylum-seekers are allowed to stay in Sweden for months without any concern by either the Migration Board or the Security Service. Due to bureaucracy and work overload, an asylum investigation usually begins several months after the person set foot in Sweden.
"Basically, we don't have any other choice, it takes such a while. We cannot employ some 10,000 investigators," Ekblad said.
So far, the increased immigration into Sweden has so far led to an increase in violent crime and a wave of sexual attacks, which the Swedish media tend to downplay through concealing the perpetrators' nationality and portraying them as Swedes.
"For me it is important that the current [stern] legislation will only apply for a maximum of three years. Even today, we can start working to revoke parts of the harsher immigration policy," Veronica Palm, the Social Democrats' chairperson in Stockholm told Swedish Radio.
Last year, 163,000 people sought asylum in Sweden, which has a population of under 10 million.