"Foreign Policy" artikkel Rootsist (ajakirjanik käis koha peal sügisel ja kirjutas artikli hiljem). Poliitilise diskussiooni piiridest: küsida, kas kümned tuhanded noored afgaanid tööturule lõimuvad, piirneb juba rassismiga.
Diana Janse, a former diplomat and now the senior foreign policy advisor to the Moderate Party (which Swedes view as “conservative”), pointed out to me that some recent generations of Swedish refugees, including Somalis, had been notably unsuccessful joining the job market. How, she wondered, will the 10,000-20,000 young Afghan men who had entered Sweden as “unaccompanied minors” fare? How would they behave in the virtual absence of young Afghan women? But she could barely raise these questions in political debate. “We have this expression in Swedish, asiktskorridor,” she said. “It means ‘opinion corridor’ — the views you can’t move outside of.” Merely to ask whether Sweden could integrate Afghans today as it had Bosnians two decades before was to risk accusations of racism.
Nagu näha, räägib ka konservatiivide esindaja puhtalt majanduslike terminitega. Küsimus põlisrahvuse keele või kultuuri püsimajäämisest oli ka tema jaoks liiga terav. See on juba Rootsi Demokraatide mängumaa:
Paula Bieler of the Sweden Democrats describes herself as a “nationalist” who fears that an increasingly multicultural Sweden is in danger of losing its identity — “the feeling that you live in a society that is also your home.” Bieler objects, not to immigrants themselves, but to the official state ideology of integration, which asks Swedes as well as newcomers to integrate into a world that celebrates diversity, and thus casts Sweden as a gorgeous mosaic. Are native Swedes to think of their own extraordinarily stable thousand-year-old culture as simply one among many national identities? Thomas Gur, a widely published critic of Sweden’s open-door policy, says that it is precisely this reaction that accounts for the popularity of the Sweden Democrats.
Arusaama, et väärtused loevad, et neid antakse edasi kultuuritausta osana ja neid võib hiljem vaid osaliselt muuta, vaadeldakse Rootsis rassismina ja ka seniste kõrgete eesmärkide läbikukkumise tunnistamisena:
An observation that is now taken for granted in the United States — that values matter, that they are transmitted culturally, that they can be only partly changed by social institutions — is treated in Sweden as a form of racism, as well as an implicit admission of failure.
Suur hulk lähedasi inimesi on seetõttu ka tülli läinud:
The refugee issue has split Sweden’s genteel consensus as no other question has in recent memory. As Ivar Arpi, a columnist at the daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet and an inveterate critic of the country’s refugee policy, said to me, “People have lost friends over this; families are divided against one another. I’ve had agonizing discussions with my mother and my little sister.”
Mis puutub tööturgu, siis senine statistika näitab, et mure on põhjendatud:
Tino Sanandaji, an economist and critic of refugee policy whose work has become so controversial in the Swedish media that he asked me not to name his university, says while 82 percent of adult Swedes are in the workforce, only 52 percent of immigrants from non-Western countries are — a gap that has grown rapidly in recent years. [...] While only one-fifth of Swedes fail to graduate from high school, the figure for immigrants is one-third. Sanandaji points out that the consequence for Sweden’s generous state is a sharp increase in welfare payments, 60 percent of which go to immigrants.
Jutt sellest, et tulijad kuuluvad Süüria haritud keskklassi hulka, on müüt:
Despite widespread reports that Syrian refugees are drawn largely from the educated middle class, statistics compiled by the Swedish Migration Agency show that half the new arrivals do not have a high-school degree, and one-third have not progressed beyond ninth grade. The figures are yet higher for the Afghan unaccompanied minors.
Põgenike käitlus toimub väga organiseeritult ja osa neist on muide ka otsustanud, et nüüd on õige moment põgeneda islami kui sellise eest:
The refugees were greeted in Hyllie, the first station across the Danish border, by several dozen border police officials, unarmed, male and female, flawlessly proficient in English, and exceptionally polite. There, the refugees were escorted upstairs to a line of waiting buses, which took them to the Migration Agency office in Malmo. The office is staffed by squads of helpful young people, as well as translators who speak Arabic, Dari, Pashto, Somali, and Tigre — the chief language of Eritrea. Nervous refugees brandished crumpled papers at anyone who looked official. I spoke to an Iraqi, Walid Ali Edo; or rather, I spoke to Edo’s uncle, Fares Krit, who had emigrated to Sweden years earlier, and translated for him. Edo was a Yazidi from Mosul. The Yazidis practice a syncretic faith that the Islamic State regards as a heresy far worse than Judaism or Christianity. When the Islamic State extremists reached the area in June 2014, they began systematically killing Yazidi men and raping and enslaving women. Edo, his wife, and his three small children raced out of town, and then trudged 50 miles north to Dohuk in Iraqi Kurdistan. Over the course of a year, they had made their way to Diyarbakir, in southeastern Turkey, paid $3,000 to be smuggled by boat to Greece, and then crossed Europe by foot, car, and train. Krit persuaded them to come to Sweden.
I asked Edo why he didn’t stay in Diyarbakir. Krit relayed my question, and then replied, in a whisper, “He says, `I can not live with Muslims.’” I pointed out that Diyarbakir was a largely Kurdish city. Krit, amused, said to me, “You have the black dog and the white dog, but they’re both dogs.” Given Swedish hypersensitivity to ethnic stereotyping, I’m hoping that Edo did not try out that expression at his asylum interview.
When I arrived at the migration office a little past noon, 50-odd people stood on a line that snaked outside the building in order to be interviewed, while another 200-300 asylum-seekers stood or sat inside, waiting to be assigned a bed for the night. Some recent arrivals had to wait a day or two — but no longer — to be processed. Refugees in Germany have rioted at food lines, while conditions at the refugee camp in Calais, France, known as “The Jungle” are notoriously dismal. The atmosphere in Malmo, by contrast, was remarkably calm and quiet. Nobody shouted; I don’t recall hearing a child cry. The Swedes were efficient and extraordinarily protective of their charges; I had had to wear down several officials just to gain the right to talk to refugees, whose privacy they feared I would violate. The interview line moved smartly. Officials had abandoned an earlier effort to gain background information about applicants; now interviewers simply asked their name, date of birth, and home country, and took a photograph and a set of fingerprints.
Inimesed, kes otseselt põgenikega tegelevad, ei ole kuigi optimistlikud ja autor sedastab, et saabus Rootsi tuule pöördumise hetkel:
Back at the Red Cross station, opinion was surprisingly anti-refugee, including among volunteers. The translator said that he did not believe many of the new arrivals would ever be able to integrate into Sweden’s liberal, individualistic society. A border policeman told me, “Last summer, my grandmother almost starved to death in the hospital, but the migrants get free food and medical care. I think a government’s job is to take care of its own people first, and then, if there’s anything left over, you help other people.”
I had, it turned out, arrived in Sweden at the very moment when the supply of goodwill was petering out. A poll in early November found that 41 percent of Swedes thought the country was taking too many refugees, up from 29 percent in September.
Igatahes on põgenikekriis juba läinud väga kalliks niing raha on võetud välisabi pealt:
Even before Sweden slammed on the brakes, it seemed that the country had posed for itself a test that it could not pass, and could not acknowledge that it could not pass. The financial costs, even for one of Europe’s richest countries, were daunting. Sweden expects to spend about 7 percent of its $100 billion budget next year on refugees. The real number is somewhat higher, since the costs of educating and training those who have already received asylum are not included in that figure. It is, in any case, double the 2015 budget. Where will the additional funds come from? It’s not clear yet, but since the cost of caring for refugees is considered a form of development assistance, Sweden has already cut 30 percent of its very generous foreign aid budget, which largely goes to fortify the very countries from which people are now fleeing, to help make up the difference. Other European donors, including Norway, have done so as well.
Rootsi helde abiraha tõmbab ligi põgenikke ka naaberriikidest ja pole jätkusuutlik:
She [moderaat Diana Janse] had just learned that since the right to 450 days of parental leave per child enshrined in Swedish laws also applies to women who arrive in the country with children under seven, refugees could qualify for several years’ worth of paid leave — even without working, since unemployed women also receive maternal benefits. She was convinced that Sweden needed to end the practice of giving Swedish social payments to refugees, not only because it was unaffordable, but because Sweden had no interest in out-bidding its neighbors to woo refugees.
Praegu lastakse Rootsi ainult otse Türgist, Liibanonist või Jordaaniast saabuvaid põgenikke, kelle staatust on kinnitanud ÜRO Põgenikeagentuur:
Sweden now accepts only those refugees arriving directly from Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, and cleared by the U.N. refugee agency. After taking 160,000 refugees — 30,000 less than the maximum it had projected — Sweden had finally run out of room, money, and patience. Even that wasn’t the final sign of Sweden’s reluctant regression to the European mean, for in January came the announcement that 80,000 refuges would face deportation.
