Sweden Launches 'Information Campaign' to Reduce Migrant Flow

On Tuesday, Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard and far-right Sweden Democrat leader in parliament Henrik Vinge announced that the Swedish government will launch an "information campaign" to discourage refugees from coming to the country.

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"The main objective is to inform about the Swedish migration policy so that fewer people will come here. Among other things, this includes distributing an information package to foreign authorities and other authorities with contact points abroad. Targeted information must also go to foreign newsrooms and news agencies," Malmer Stenergard said. 

"If refugees who would be forced to return receive information about the regulations that apply here, we reduce the risk of suffering for these people and focus to a greater extent on those who have genuine reasons to get protection," she pointed out.

Malmer Stenergard also mentioned that 76 percent of the refugees who arrived in the Nordic countries in 2019 ended up in Sweden and that this number must be substantially decreased.

In that year, Sweden received just under 22,000 asylum applications, according to statistics provided by the Swedish Migration Agency. In 2020 and 2021, the corresponding figures were 13,000 and 11,400.

"Sweden must not have a more generous view on asylum than mandated by European Union legislation and other legally binding treaties," Malmer Stenergard said.

The Swedish Migration Agency will decrease the number of quota refugees -- persons who have fled their home countries and been selected by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to be resettled in a third country -- from 5,000 to 900.

Ahead of the election in September last year, the bloc that eventually won campaigned for tighter immigration rules. They are supported by the far-right Sweden Democrats, who has campaigned against immigration.