To think Sweden's inability to cope with the consequences of its open-door immigration policy was both tragically predictable and a lesson to other countries not to follow suit?

[BackToTheNorth]

As reported in the Guardian (so this can't be dismissed blithely as 'Daily Fail propaganda'):

'Sweden’s army is to help manage the fallout from the country’s refugee crisis, with the civilian administration struggling to cope with an unprecedented surge in arrivals and a top official claiming there is no room left, in the short-term, for migrants reaching Swedish shores.'

'“We don’t have any more space,” the agency’s lead spokesman, Fredrik Bengtsson, said. State-owned accommodation has been full since 2012, he said, and now officials cannot find any more affordable private housing. “For the time being, all of these are finished as well, so for the last three or four nights we’ve had people sleeping in our [non-residential] centres across the country. Right now we’re just looking for people to have a roof over their heads."'

'Sweden is bearing a disproportional burden of the European refugee crisis, due in part to its pledge in 2013 to provide permanent residency to almost any Syrian who reached Swedish soil. Of the roughly 800,000 people to have arrived in Europe by sea this year, at least one in seven have ended up in Sweden, even though the country accounts for just one in 50 EU citizens. So far in 2015, more than 120,000 people have applied for asylum in Sweden.'

'This struggle to provide something as basic as accommodation has led to fears about Sweden’s ability to handle more complex refugee needs, such as education and healthcare. “How will they manage doctors and schools, and how will [refugees] learn Swedish?” asked Enar Bostedt, one of Sweden’s most experienced asylum lawyers. “That’s totally another issue that no one has had time to think about yet.”'

'Some refugees have lost patience with the backlog. “In Sweden the process is so slow, so I’m going back to Iraq,” said Hassanein, a 29-year-old technician, waiting at Stockholm central station, before his attempted homewards journey.'

www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/10/sweden-calls-on-army-to-help-manage-refugee-crisis

AIBU to think that the naive utopianism of open-door advocates will lead to social and economic disaster in Europe, and that Britain's policy of taking 20,000 of the most vulnerable - and no more - is an infinitely-preferable compromise?

No, Cloppy, you were making a point about how coming from a place and having a history of your ancestors and family living somewhere gave you no more right to live there than any other person. You are happy to tell someone British that they have no more right to live in this country than anybody else, we have no right to say who can come here and what they can do here. But as soon as we start talking about indigenous tribes in other countries, or communities moved to make way for developments suddenly you decide to indulge in a fit of moral relativism and decide people do have a right to live where they come from.

You are dismissing some people's claim to their home, the place they come from and the place they live, as being nothing but meaningless luck. Then you're insisting that for other groups of people, they have a right to be somewhere for exactly the same reasons. Basically what it boils down to is the fact you want to be able to pick and choose who is entitled to call the place they live 'home' based on your own personal predjudices and perception of who is deserving.

Are you suggesting that the refugees spend the winter in tents in the Swedish forests?

Some immigrants refused to disembark their coach because they did not like the look of the forest in rural Sweden, there were not enough facilities, it was not urban enough, not enough shops, and too cold. They were appalled they were expected to live there.
www.dagbladet.no/2015/10/27/nyheter/uteriks/politikk/asylsokere/flyktninger/41699827/ (sorry it is in Norwegian)

A bit off, considering that is how many people live in places like Sweden and Norway!

Which goes back to my point about these 'refugees' cherry-picking where they want to go. These 'desperate' people aren't so desperate that they'll go somewhere that is merely safe. If that was the case they'd have stayed in Turkey or Lebanon or Egypt. They want a home, money, access to language classes, shops, internet, a job and all that goes with their dream of 'a better life'. They didn't traipse all the way from Turkey to Sweden to live in a tent - they had a tent in Turkey and that wasn't good enough.

Today 15:36 Cloppysow

I don't have to clarify or defend my position to anyone, particularly someone whose attitude is as arsey as yours

Perhaps Booyaka is arsey because posters like Probably are showing a spectacular misunderstanding of history and using it as a basis upon which to attack her position? And I think you accused her of being drunk, which is not exactly up there with the great ripostes of our time.

Bang On, Booyaka. You just nailed it.

Spot on, Boyaaka.

juneau they want food, and a future. Many refugees have neither, in the camps in Turkey and Syria and Jordan: the UNHCR doesn't have the funding to feed them and they cannot work. This especially applies to young adult men, who are not considered vulnerable and are not priority for feeding programmes (this is one reason why men are more numerous than women among refugees).

If we were serious about keeping refugees in the Middle East then about three years ago was the time to start considering how to incentivise them to stay. People won't stay somewhere where they have no food security, cannot work and see no hope for the future. In that situation it's human nature to attempt to move on.

I don't agree with the "no borders" crowd simply because it's not attainable, politically or practically. But Europe needs to step up, first, to prevent a humanitarian crisis (by providing the resources to shelter and feed refugees while their applications are processed) and secondly to stop it getting worse (by working with those countries where most of the refugees are still located - the Middle East - to improve conditions. This will be enormously costly of course but if people don't want refugees in Europe then this is the price).

Many of the migrants that have made it to Germany and Sweden have shelter and food. If, as you say Mistigri this is all they want why are they setting fire to the accommodation they have been given and refusing to eat the food as its not to their taste.

I know the conditions they are in is not ideal but how can these countries suddenly find so many spare houses for these thousands of people at short notice and surely if they are fleeing torture and death they would at least be thankful to be in a safe place for now at least.

They could have food and shelter in Greece, if they applied for asylum there. Or in Hungary, or Austria or any of the 10 other countries they cross to get to their chosen destinations. All this rhetoric about 'desperate people' and 'you would only put your children on a boat if it was safer than the land' fails to address the fact that many of them have been safe for months or even years and that no one needs to risk their children's lives by putting them in a boat on the beach at Bodrum, a holiday destination frequented by millions every year in a safe country. But that doesn't make such a compelling a story ...

juneau what I don't understand is how the little englanders on this thread can always argue that refugees are someone else's problem. If you were Greek, would you pitch up to help because? If you were Turkish would you be fine about having 2 million Syrians in your country? If it's not OK for you, why is it OK for them? No one wants to answer this.

Greece doesn't have the ability to provide for or process the applications of hundreds of thousands of migrants (any more than the UK would have if they all turned up on the English coast at once - and the UK is a much richer and more populous country than Greece). It would be much fairer, more human and ultimately safer to divvy up the job of providing for the displaced between all EU states rather than letting all the burden fall on those which are in the geographical front line, or those with more humanitarian policies.

why are they setting fire to the accommodation they have been given and refusing to eat the food as its not to their taste

For that matter, why are some also refusing to be fingerprinted? Personally I'd do whatever it took to properly access a system which offers at least some protection, however temporarily, if I was as utterly desperate as these folk claim

But that's just the point: it seems some aren't desperate at all, but simply determined to do whatever it takes to get whatever they want while being quite prepared to use violence if thwarted. Hardly a good omen for the future, whichever country they end up in ...

QuintShhhhhh

What a delightfully unbiased rag newspaper you've picked, there!

"De påpeker at stedet mangler nødvendige tilbud som skole, butikker og lege."

How picky of them. Totally sounds like a place Swedes and Norwegians would want to live.

I have some sympathy with the viewpoint that holds that some of the Syrians trying to get to the UK are seizing an opportunity for economic migration to the country of their choice.

I worked, many years ago, with a charity that funded Syrians (and people from neighboring countries) to study for postgraduate degrees in the UK. One of the conditions of scholarship was that they return to their country of origin after their studies and use them for development purposes and this was stipulated, tested etc. Did they? Sadly not - nearly all of them wanted to remain in the UK.

Just for anyone who can't be arsed with translating that - it says they were protesting in the busses because the place they were expected to live was lacking services such as schools, shops and doctors. How ungrateful of them to not want to build a life in such a place!

It would be much fairer ... all EU states

Why is it the EU's problem? Why not the Middle East. Or Africa. Or India. Or China. Or America.

Where did I say it was someone else's problem? Its Europe's problem and I'm hoping that the UK will be a big part of the solution (a solution that doesn't encourage people to stampede across our neighbours to get here).

But if you're arguing that all these people want is food and shelter I'm saying 'Bollocks', because that's clearly not all they want. They want to get to certain countries, they're willing to do just about anything to get to those countries, and when they get there they have expectations of what they will be provided with and where.

And I know what you're saying about the UNHCR food crisis in the region and its something that could easily be solved with the requisite political will. Quite why there isn't the will I don't know - you'd think hundreds of thousands of people pouring unchecked into Europe might motivate them wouldn't you?

Were none of them teachers, shopkeepers/businessmen or doctors back home then? Surely they could get some support systems going, however basic.

They want the opportunity to rebuild the lives that have been ripped from them an to give their children their futures back. They're trying to do what every one of us would want to do if the same happened to us.

Were none of them teachers, shopkeepers/businessmen or doctors back home then? Surely they could get some support systems going, however basic.

...in the forest? The article also states that at least some of them were scared by the idea of animals roaming around in the forest, and it being too cold.

I'm not sure what you expect a doctor to do in the middle of the forest, tbh, particularly in a situation where it is probably illegal for her/him to officially practise medicine in Sweden/Norway.

Deep breath ok, some outragously ignorant remarks about sweden and our attitude to helping immigrants. I suggest that most of you making remarks about Swedish high morals (actually to most of us it would be basic human decency) have never been. And a couple of trips to pitea does not a Swede make.
Anyway, yes right wing parties thrive in tough times, that is nothing new. But it does not and never will stop most Swedes believing that helping fellow humans is the right thing to do.

Strangechild, do I know the geography of sweden? Yes, pretty well since I am born and bread there.

Clearly not suggesting anyone lives in tent, how ridiculous. I am saying that in a humanitarian crisis we (we as in swedish people) can hardly use "lack of Space" as an argument...clearly

Lndn I don't think anyone's arguing you're lacking in geographical space, but Sweden (and Germany and the UK, for that matter) are severely lacking in housing space. Beds, school places etc. Services, like Smillas pointed out upthread. Geographical space counts for sod all if there's nowhere to actually live.

The entire EU is woefully under-prepared for the numbers of refugees and migrants which are knocking on it's doors. All that happens (at the moment) when we invite them here is that they exchange being homeless or living in a centre in Turkey for being homeless or living in a centre in Sweden / Germany / England. As I said before, that's not help. It's like inviting 50 friends over for dinner and only cooking for 5.

I don't know what the answer is, but I think it's clear that the ever-swelling numbers of people arriving will be unsustainable in the immediate future. God knows how the homeless refugees will cope in the Scandinavian winter. Even if major building projects kicked off tomorrow morning, it would be weeks, months before it would have any impact, and in the meantime, how many more refugees would arrive?

Lndnmummy

Clearly not suggesting anyone lives in tent, how ridiculous.

They already are - heated ones apparently, and that is where tens of thousands of refugees will spend the winter. All because the Swedes are utterly overwhelmed by the number of refugees entering the country.

It would appear the Swedes are imposing half arsed border controls, even the Greens are agreeing saying there is no alternative.
www.thelocal.se/20151111/sweden-set-to-mount-border-checks

ldnmummy Deep breath ok, some outragously ignorant remarks about sweden and our attitude to helping immigrants. I suggest that most of you making remarks about Swedish high morals (actually to most of us it would be basic human decency) have never been. And a couple of trips to pitea does not a Swede make.

Fair enough. You have criticised, but do you have anything constructive to add to the debate? Particularly with regards to whether Swedish policy is to convert Muslim immigrants to Christianity and stifle their culture, as they did with the indigenous Saami? It does seem strange to say something like never will stop most Swedes believing that helping fellow humans is the right thing to do when Sweden hasn't even bothered to enforce many of the UN Recommendations, which it eventually got round to ratifying in 2011. It really is a shame that that "helping fellow human beings" attitude doesn't extend to your own native people. Swedish treatment of the Saami is something people simply don't talk about or sweep under the carpet.

And why would you and other posters following the "Sweden is perfect" line consider it acceptable to criticise other countries (well, mainly Britain) but not for British people to criticise Swedish policy?

And a couple of trips to pitea does not a Swede make.

Well, lets not get too excited here. Its probably two more trips than many Swedes have made.