The Swedish government has launched an international campaign to discourage mass immigration to the Nordic country.
The goal of this drive, bluntly named "Don't Come Here," is to undo the image of Sweden as a benefit-rich land of milk and honey and hammer home the idea that the country's extremely generous asylum policy is no longer quite as generous anymore.
"It's about giving an account of exactly what Swedish migration policy looks like and will look like," Immigration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said at a press conference.
The campaign has already featured prominent international interviews with Maria Malmer Stenergard, Sweden's migration minister, in German, French, Danish and Belgian media, and an opinion piece in a German magazine. Among others, Stenergard suggested that more than half of the foreign-born inhabitants residing in Sweden cannot support themselves. Furthermore, a fact sheet detailing the Scandinavian country's immigration policy and immigrant living conditions will be distributed to embassies in a mail-out.
Earlier this year, the Moderates-led liberal-conservative minority government with the assistance of the national-conservative Sweden Democrats announced a "paradigm shift" in migration policy, promising to limit the influx of newcomers. The idea of the paradigm shift was recently echoed by Minister of Migration Stenergard in a video on the government's website.
While pushing for change, both Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Stenergard praised Denmark for pioneering stricter immigration policies.
"Denmark has shown the way, both in terms of a stricter immigration policy but also a much tougher criminal policy. Getting Sweden in order is our absolutely necessary big project, and that includes both reducing immigration so that we can cope with integration, but also bringing down major gang crime. Denmark has shown that both things are possible if you are long-term in your changes," Ulf Kristersson said during a recent visit to Denmark to discuss immigration issues with the country's prime minister, and to the Danish Returns Agency, which is responsible for sending refugees back to their home countries.
Kristersson further admitted that Sweden is "10–15 years behind", calling for the need to catch up amid "hard times." Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen replied that she was pleased that Denmark "after 20 years of strict immigration policies, can inspire other countries."
In Denmark, consecutive governments representing both the left and the right have been pushing for stricter immigration policy, constricting the influx of newcomers down to a trickle. Denmark's own "paradigm shift" from 2019 led to the government making it an official policy that all asylum seekers have temporary status in principle. Furthermore, Denmark is known for passing attention-grabbing laws such as the notorious 2016 Jewelry Law, which gave Danish authorities the power to confiscate cash, jewelry, and other valuables above DKK 10,000 (nearly $1,500) from arriving migrants, ostensibly to pay for their reception and stay, and the subsequent Ghetto Package, which aims to reduce the number of people of "non-Western origin" through measures such as evictions, harsher punishment, over-policing, and compulsory daycare. Yet another pet project of the Danish government involves setting up a reception center abroad to process asylum seekers' requests.
In Sweden, immigration and immigration-related crime after years of denial became a key topic of the 2022 election. The current government make-up, in which the Moderates and their allies the Christian Democrats, heavily rely on outward assistance from the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats.
With buzzwords such as "parallel societies," "no-go zones," "illegals" and "exclusion areas" topping news stories after years of careful avoidance, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson himself ran on a platform of "straightening out Sweden," pledging to crack down on crime and combat issues from soaring gang shootings to high unemployment and urban blight, for which he blamed his predecessors, including fellow party member and former PM Fredrik Reinfeldt, who notoriously pushed for open borders using the much-touted "open your hearts" slogan.