Sweden: The Price of Migration gatestoneinstitute.org/15081/sweden-m…
"The industries have a very limited need for people without experience and education." — Johanna Odö, municipal councilor; Aftonbladet, October 3, 2019.
Now, to save money, the Ystad municipality will no longer serve hot meals to the elderly and cleaning services will be limited to once every three weeks.
Motala municipality had said that it would lower the heat in buildings managed by the city, including old age homes, to save money. "We will take care of the elderly; they will not be freezing, they can have blankets," the message went.
Meanwhile, in June, the Swedish parliament voted in favor of a law that is likely to increase immigration to Sweden based on family reunification.
The disproportionately large influx of people who do not have the educational or language skills to work in the Swedish economy was never likely to help bring about the lowest unemployment in the EU.
The Swedish city of Filipstad exemplifies a place where the influx of non-Western migrants, some of them illiterate, with little or no education, has meant that the unemployment rate in that group is at 80%: their livelihoods depend on the municipality's social welfare program.
In 2015, during the European migration crisis, nearly 163,000 migrants arrived in Sweden seeking asylum -- primarily from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a recent report by the newspaper Aftonbladet. Out of those 163,000 migrants, 60,000 received a residence permit.
In the group of people over the age of 15, made up of 40,019 people, only 4,574 get their livelihood from employment, according to Aftonbladet's report. 18,405 people from the cohort live on welfare handed out by municipalities and 9,970 people receive funds for studying.
eight of the ten municipalities that received the most asylum seekers in 2015 have higher unemployment than the national average, and in all ten municipalities there is a higher proportion of the population living on welfare.
Aftonbladet mentions Ljusnarsberg in Örebro County as the municipality that received the highest number of asylum seekers -- 230 per 1000 inhabitants. There, the unemployment rate is more than 10% and the number of welfare recipients is 22.9%.
In Malmö, where unemployment is 13.7 %, almost double the national average, the municipality is looking at a deficit of 390 million kroner ($40.2 million).
"This is something we share with many other municipalities. It is due to the demographic development, where fewer [people] have to provide for more," the financial director of Malmö municipality, Anna Westerling, recently told the daily newspaper Sydsvenskan.
Every fourth municipality and every third region, according to a report by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions had a budget deficit in 2018. At least 110 municipalities expect to run a deficit this year. (There are 290 municipalities and 21 regions in Sweden)
Many municipalities therefore need to make budget cuts. In Ystad, in the south of Sweden, the municipality, as part of the services of the welfare state, helps the elderly with hot meals and cleaning services.
Now, to save money, the municipality will no longer serve hot meals to the elderly and cleaning services will be limited to once every three weeks. The elderly will instead have to get ready-made meals from the supermarket.
Meanwhile, in June, the Swedish parliament voted in favor of a law that is likely to increase immigration to Sweden based on family reunification. The Moderate Party and the Sweden Democrats were the only ones to vote against the proposal.
"The government is completely relaxed about this. They are closing their eyes to what has happened after 2015," said Maria Malmer Stenergard, a Moderate Party MP; "there is still a crisis in the municipalities. We say no to this because we need a strict refugee policy."
