Michael de Laine

Sweden’s Liberals says asylum-seekers should be prepared for jobs from arrival

By Michael de Laine, Copenhagen, 22 March 2009

Folkpartiet, the Liberal Party of Sweden, said on Friday that new people arriving in the country must be offered conditions and opportunities for getting work and learning Swedish.

“The reception of people moving to Sweden has not been successful,” said Nyamko Sabuni, the spokesperson for the party’s integration affairs group, when she presented the party’s new report ‘Egenmakt för ett öppet samhälle (Towards an open society)’. “Far too many end up on long-term benefits. A humane integration policy does not lock people into isolation and leaves them feeling left out.”

Sabuni added: “The notion that people who have come to Sweden are passive victims rather than an asset for society must be destroyed. This needs a change in the way we receive immigrants, and an introduction scheme for new arrivals.”

The report lists 31 points where changes or improvements should be made to ease the situation of new arrivals in Sweden.

They include separating the services involved in receiving the new arrivals from Migrationsverket (Swedish Migration Board), so this concentrates on the core areas of assessing asylum-seekers’ claims and granting residence permits, while the reception services should be placed under local authorities, charitable organisations and the like.

New arrivals should be offered dialogue with job centres as soon as their residence permits have been granted, so suitable jobs and homes can be found through a nationwide system.

A citizenship course should be offered as an introduction to Swedish society, but the immigrants should at the same time commit themselves to learning Swedish in three years.

The state should conduct a review of the 400,000 jobs that at present require Swedish citizenship, to see whether that requirement can be dropped.

Local integration centres, run by local authorities and funded in part by the state, should be set up to promote integration and an exchange of ideas and experience. The local authorities should offer people on benefits part-time activities in the form of training, work experience or practical job applications to help them get established on the labour market.

Suburbs should be developed to make them more attractive as residential areas, and there should be more mixed housing-office areas.

Micro-loans should be considered for use in marginalised geographical areas to help people set up their businesses.

The report also proposes setting up a university college for greater knowledge about immigrants’ cultural and social background, and migration’s importance for Swedish society and history. Courses should be offered to civil servants in the social services, the migration board, the health and care sector, the police and the job centres.

The Liberals want assistance to child marriages made a criminal offence, while forcing a person to marry another person should be an offence in its own right.

The party also goes in for manifoldness, but not without equality.

“From a liberal point of view we can never accept that cultural considerations should imply that women are oppressed,” the report states. “We reject the demands for special solutions and exemptions from Swedish law. Nor should courts and the authorities adapt Swedish law so individuals are violated because of misdirected cultural considerations.”

In its manifesto, the Swedish Liberal Party says, “Many people in Sweden are excluded from jobs and a full integration into our society as a result of their ethnic background. Isolation is growing. With more jobs, better schools, safe residential areas and a relentless fight against discrimination, we can build an integrated Sweden. Liberals will fight segregation, through a work and development guarantee for everyone who is fit for work, through knowledge guarantees focusing on Swedish language instruction in schools, through a tougher fight against discrimination and three times as many local police officers in segregated areas. We believe that a person applying for Swedish citizenship should have a reasonable knowledge of Swedish.”