Sweden´s immigration policies are inhumane. Let me demonstrate this with a brief grab bag of concrete examples of Sweden´s mistreatment of immigrants.
 
a) The Swedish daily newspaper Metro reported on June 6, 2014 that a seventeen year-old boy who was a refugee from North Korea was going to be “sent back” due to a decision reached by the Swedish Immigration Authority (“Migrationsverket” in Swedish). Strictly speaking, the boy was going to be sent back to Communist China. For when he had fled his home country, North Korea – he had done so by crossing the land border between North Korea and China. Subsequently he managed to reach Sweden from China.
 
The big problem with this was that the boy would almost certainly be tortured and executed if he was forcibly repatriated to North Korea. Now, the Swedish Immigration Authority was not going to put the boy on a plane back to North Korea. They were “merely” going to forcibly put him on a plane back to China.
 
But of course, the Chinese would almost certainly in their turn expel him to North Korea.
 
What was the reasoning behind the Swedish government´s decision to send a teenage boy to almost certain torture and death? Well, when the boy came to Sweden from China, he for natural reasons, could not conclusively prove who he was – and that he was a North Korean. And since the boy travelled to Sweden from China, the Swedish immigration bureaucracy assumed that he was likely a Chinese – and therefore not entitled to asylum in Sweden.
 
The Swedish immigration bureaucrats interrogated the boy with questions concerning his alleged background in North Korea. And – the bureaucrats noticed that the boy reported towns in North Korea which did not exist on the map. So, they assumed that he was lying when he claimed to be a North Korean national. However, an investigation by a Swedish journalistic institution called “Ekot” showed that the secretary who wrote down the boy´s testimony had spelled some of the towns incorrectly. That was why some of the towns the boy had mentioned seemed not to exist.
 
Well, the Swedish Immigration Authority stood its ground. They reasoned that the Chinese government would not send the boy to North Korea anyway. For – the boy “must” be Chinese. The government of China would never have let the boy enter China in the first place – if he really had been a North Korean! The immigration bureaucrats simply would not admit that they had messed up. And they engaged in wildly implausible rationalizations for the sake of justifying the sending of the boy back to China – and thereby back to torture and execution in North Korea!
 
[I never learned whether the unfortunate boy was finally sent back to China/North Korea.]
 
b) On May 22, 2014 Metro reported that a woman from Uganda had sought asylum in Sweden for the sake of escaping female genital mutilation by relatives of her deceased father. The Swedish immigration Authority denied her asylum on the grounds that “female genital mutilation is illegal in Uganda. And therefore the woman could count on the protection of the Ugandan government authorities." Brilliant! But of course, we can count on the protection of the authorities in Uganda. After all - Uganda is well known for being a state with a dependable rule of law? Isn´t it?
 
c) Even children get “sent back”. Here is a verbatim quote from Metro (April 2, 2013):
 
“More and more children who come to Sweden alone are forcibly evicted from Sweden. And, right now, official money from the European Union is intended to contribute to more efficient eviction of children from countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
d) The immigration minister [at the time] Leif Blomberg (who was also the former chairman of the Swedish Metalworkers´ Labour Union) aired his views on the question of political asylum in the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN) on January 28, 1996.
 
The occasion was that the Swedish [Social Democrat] government had at the time just decided to change one of the rules in the asylum issue. Now [i.e. January 1996], the mere fact that an asylum-seeker had demonstrably been tortured in his home country would no longer be a sufficient reason for granting said refugee asylum in Sweden. Beginning in January 1996 the Swedish Immigration Authority would be charged with the responsibility of judging whether there was any significant risk that said asylum-seeker would be tortured again – if he/she was “sent back”!
 
DN gave a concrete example of how this would work. A refugee had been punished with torture in his home country because he refused to do military service. This refugee had 21 scars and injuries over his entire body. The judicial medical doctor Erik Edston had testified to this. DN published a photo of the man´s body where we could easily see his awful scars from the torture. But the man was “sent back” anyway! The immigration bureaucrats held the view that there did not exist “sufficient humanitarian reasons” to give the man permission to stay in Sweden!
 
Now, DN confronted Leif Blomberg with this concrete case and asked Mr. Blomberg to comment. Well, Blomberg tried “bravely” to deal with this thorny question. This is what Blomberg said according to DN: “You can have been subjected to a variety of things, but the question is this – if you go home, will it be repeated, is there a risk for you or not?”
 
This is obscene! According to Blomberg – the veteran labour unionist and Social Democrat Minister of Immigration [at the time – this was 1996] the physical safety of innocent human beings should be dependent on the educated guesses of the Swedish Immigration Authority´s bureaucrats concerning whether physical torture which is known to have been inflicted in the past will be inflicted again (on the same person and by the same government!)
 
e) The Social Democrat Prime Minister [at the time – i.e. 2004] Göran Persson wished to limit the immigration from East and Central Europe, according to a report from the conservative newspaper Svenska Dagbladet 0n January 31, 2004. “I see enormous problems on the horizon if we do not protect ourselves.” Persson commented. Protect ourselves against what? Persson mentioned the danger which was posed by what he called “social tourism”. In other words, Persson was afraid that the Swedish government would be obliged to provide welfare benefits to a larger population! Oh – how horrible!
 
f) Svenska Dagbladet reported on September 29, 2004 that: ”Säpo (the Swedish security police) is deceived by their own sources. Asylum-seekers have been sent back on the grounds of false `information´ and suspected terrorists have received asylum. Säpo´s own informers leave false testimony and exploit their position.”
 
In other words, in plain language – the Immigration Authority evidently bases its decisions on `information´ from Säpo (the security police). Evidently, the Swedish government perceives immigration, immigration per se, as being a threat from abroad to Sweden´s national security. The Swedish government suffers from a paranoid fear of immigration as such!
 
Sweden´s political leaders are xenophobes. And not just the “right-wing extremists” – but the mainstream political leaders too. Including the “Liberals”, the Agrarians and the Social Democrats!
 

Everyone who has read the newspapers in Sweden in recent decades has seen many, many heartrending human tragedies. It has happened time and again that refugees and immigrants have tried to commit suicide when the Swedish police have turned up for the sake of taking them away to an airplane headed for their home country. Why all the suicide attempts? But of course, the suicide attempts are caused by the simple fact that these unfortunate individuals risk a fate worse than mere death if they get “sent back”. It goes without saying that there are always (usually good) reasons behind such desperate measures as attempts to commit suicide.
 
Other human tragedies which are due to restrictive immigration policies are the many deaths among refugees who attempt to enter western nations “illegally”. Whenever western countries try to “regulate” immigration the result is that the victims of poverty and tyranny in the rest of the world become desperate. Since they cannot count on being admitted to a western country by legal means they must, in the name of self-preservation, try to get into some western nation illegally. And then they not so seldom drown when their fragile boats sink out in the ocean – or they die from thirst and heat out in the desert between Mexico and the American southwest – or they suffocate in hidden compartments in trucks, train cars or ships.
 
All too many Swedes are so swinishly cynical that they don´t give a damn that innocent human beings die because of the Swedish government´s restrictions on immigration. Many Swedes feel that the most important consideration is to choke the immigration to Sweden. Many other Swedes, however, are decent human beings. They are therefore upset by their fellow Swede´s cruelty to putative refugees and immigrants. Unfortunately, they do not understand why Sweden is saddled with such an inhumane immigration politics. The populist party, Sweden Democrats, who rant and rage against immigration - they are after all a marginal factor in Swedish politics. So - they are not the prime cause of Sweden´s restrictive immigration policies.
 
Well, here is the cause of Sweden´s inhumane immigration politics:
 
The hostility of Swedish politics to immigration is caused by the very same factor which was one of the two causes South Africa´s apartheid politics in the bad old days.
 
 

 
What were the two causes of the imposition of apartheid in South Africa? One of the two causes is well known in Sweden. Racism! The descendants of the immigrants to South Africa from Europe looked down on the blacks, the “coloureds” and the Asians. The majority of the whites in South Africa wanted a politics which “defended” their own privileged status and power.
 
But the other cause of apartheid is close to completely unknown in Sweden – because of the simple fact that the intellectual and political establishment in Sweden would be mighty embarrassed if the cause in question became known to the public. This, in Sweden unknown, cause of the apartheid policy was the simple fact that the white workers in South Africa wanted "protection" against competition from members of the black majority for the well-paid jobs they enjoyed.
 
The background to this is that around 125 years ago virtually all the white South Africans had a better education and therefore superior work skills compared to the indigenous blacks. For that reason, virtually all the well-paid jobs were performed by white workers. But, around the turn of the century between the 19th and the 20th quite a few black workers began acquiring the ability to perform the well-paid jobs in, for example, the rapidly expanding mining industry. When this began happening the white workers began to worry about the “risk” that their wages would be depressed by wage competition from the blacks. For – there were so many more blacks than whites! Just think! What if twenty blacks applied for every available well-paid mining or industrial job? The nominal wages for the mining and industrial jobs might actually wind up going down! How awful!
 
So - a political game developed in South Africa during the 1890s. The white mining workers encouraged racist elements in the government to pass laws which denied the blacks access to the well-paid jobs in the mining industry. The mining industry´s employer associations opposed this discriminatory policy. The employers, but of course, wanted to be free to hire whomsoever did the best job for the most modest wage! The employers´ self-interest motivated them to be “colour blind”! The employers´ selfish preference for free competition on the job market was in fact so strong that they financed legal suits and advocacy campaigns against the segregationist legislation which was advocated by the white mining workers and their labour unions.
 
And the white farmers, who owned the preponderance of the large farms in the rural areas, allied themselves with the white mining workers. The white farmers perceived that they had a self-interest in seeing to it that the blacks would continue to lack any alternative to the low-paid jobs in agriculture. The white farmers sure as heck did not want any free competition on the job market to force up the black workers´ wages!
 
The notorious “pass laws” were instituted for the sake of limiting the supply of black job seekers in those geographical areas where the well-paid jobs were located (i.e. primarily the large cities and the mining towns).
 
For the sake of “protecting” their perceived economic interests the white workers´ labour unions formed the South African Labour Party (SALP) in 1908. Both SALP and the white workers´ labour unions embraced socialism. Their role model was the British Labour Party. They perceived the white employers as being one of their two main enemies. For – the white employers wanted to save money by means of sharing as many of the well-paid jobs as possible with the other main enemy – the black workers!
 
For the purpose of “protecting” their members´ relatively high wages SALP and the white workers´ labour unions made darn sure that laws were passed in the year 1911 which prevented the blacks from being employed in the high-wage occupations. This legislation was known colloquially as the first “Colour Bar Act”. Said legislation was alleged to serve the oh-so-worthy purpose of “worker safety”. But that was just a mere rationalization. The phony-baloney reasoning was that "If “dumb blacks” were permitted to handle heavy machinery then their racially determined incompetence would guarantee that lots and lots of accidents happened at the workplace”.
 
After the end of the First World War there was a recession in the South African mining industry. The mining companies announced that they would fire 2,000 well-paid white workers and replace them with blacks. The white workers´ union – “The Mine Workers´ Union” – responded by initiating a massive strike – along with violence and occupations of the mines.
 
The labour unions´ slogan was “Workers of the world unite, and fight for a white South Africa”!
 
After the end of the Second World War the white workers and their labour unions entered into an alliance with the white racists in “The National Party”. The National Party won the election in 1948, formed the government, introduced the concept “apartheid” and proceeded to institute an all-encompassing racial segregation legislation.
 

 

 
Members of Sweden´s worker movement used to trash South Africa´s former apartheid policy as a matter of routine. Such obscene hypocrisy! For – what is Sweden´s own “regulated” immigration legislation, if not our very own Swedish counterpart to apartheid?
 
South Africa´s apartheid (in the bad old days) “protected” the white workers´ wage advantage over the black workers – by means of locking the black workers out of the white workers´ labour market. Likewise – the Swedish immigration legislation “protects” the Swedish workers´ wage advantage over workers in foreign countries, where the wages are lower – by means of locking these workers out of the Swedish workers´ labour market.
 
The white workers in South Africa did not want to grant the blacks an equal chance to get themselves the well-paid jobs – because if they did there would arise a downward pressure on those jobs´ wages. And, likewise – the Swedish workers don´t want to grant foreigners an equal chance to get themselves well-paid jobs in Sweden – because if they did there would arise a downward pressure on those jobs´ wages (counted in nominal Crowns and Öre that is – which is not the same thing as the real wages). So – the South African government employed apartheid legislation in the bad old days for the purpose of “protecting” the white workers wage advantage over the blacks. The Swedish government employs restrictive immigration laws today for the purpose of “protecting” the Swedish workers´ wage advantage over foreigners.
 
So – what is the difference in principle between Sweden´s immigration legislation today and South Africa´s apartheid legislation during the main part of the twentieth century? Sweden today resembles the apartheid era´s South Africa more than the Swedish worker movement wants to admit!
 

 

 
There are two political forces which are hostile towards immigration in today´s Sweden. The nationalists and the socialists. These two forces are driven by different motivations. The Swedish nationalists – whose most vocal representatives in Swedish politics are the populistic “Sweden Democrats” – are Sweden´s closest counterparts to South Africa´s “The National Party”. The nationalistic Sweden Democrats wish to “protect” the Swedish culture against outsiders/aliens. The Swedish socialists – whose most vocal representative in Swedish politics is “the worker movement” - consisting of both the national confederation of labour unions (LO) and the Social Democrat Party (SAP) – is Sweden´s closest equivalent of South Africa´s white workers´ labour unions and the SALP. Sweden´s socialists wish to “protect” the Swedish workers´ wages against foreigners´ eventual wage competition.That is the awful and unvarnished truth!
 
Socialism sucks!
 
A simple question: If the worker movement is opposed to “racism” – and if the worker movement always safeguards the interests of the “weak” – then why, oh why, does the worker movement embrace restrictions on immigration? The restrictions on immigration obviously give rise to reams and reams of human tragedies. (Just read the newspapers and see!) Surely the restrictions on immigration are in conflict with the Swedish worker movement´s beloved “solidarity” slogan?
 
Well – no! The ideology of the Swedish worker movement is of such a nature that it necessarily, by its very nature, gives rise to hostility towards immigration!
 
Remember Tage Erlander? One of the founding fathers of Sweden´s beloved welfare state? He had a favourite expression. “It is the distribution which is important!” This slogan – which Tage Erlander absolutely adored – was based on the premise that the welfare of the Swedish people was “a pie of a given size”. And that the welfare of each individual Swede was a function of how said pie of a fixed size was divided up. (By the welfare state government, but of course!)
 
Well, it is a perfectly obvious implication of Tage Erlander´s above-mentioned premise – which is also one of the basic premises of the welfare state – that if the extent of each Swede´s welfare depends on how a pie of a given size is divided up – then each individual Swede´s welfare becomes smaller and smaller, the greater and greater the number of individuals who are to share that pie! And – but of course – the larger the immigration to Sweden – the greater the number of Swedes who are to share that proverbial pie!
 
So - according to the Swedish worker movement´s welfare statist ideology – all immigration necessarily decreases the individual Swede´s share of that proverbial pie. So – more immigration equates with less welfare to each individual Swedish citizen – according to the welfare statist ideology of the Swedish worker movement! So – it is not strange at all that an awful lot of Swedes today are hostile towards immigration. For – many, many of Sweden´s individual citizens have bought into the Swedish worker movement´s corrupt ideology/philosophy!
 
Another factor behind Sweden´s hostility towards immigration is the Swedish labour union movement´s premise that lower nominal wages equate with lower real wages. One of the reasons for which the Swedish labour unions virtually always try to force up the wages, counted in Crowns and Öre, as much as they possibly can – is their mistaken assumption that the quantity of money equates with the purchasing power. This belief is a classic economic fallacy which goes by the name of conflating the concept money with the concept wealth.
 
Already the Mercantilists back in the 17th century embraced this fallacy. The Mercantilists hurt their own societies´ economies in the 17th century by dint of the fact that they always, no matter what, tried to accumulate as much money (which at that time consisted of gold) in their national treasuries. Today Sweden´s labour unions likewise hurt our Swedish society by trying – always and no matter what – to inflate their members´ money wages as much as they possibly can get away with by means of blackmailing the employers. The labour unions stubbornly refuse to let their members´ wages fall to the level, counted in Crowns and Öre, at which there arises full employment. (As a matter of fact, we have not had full employment in Sweden for many, many past decades. The labour unions wage policies have ensured this. Even the Swedish government´s own phoney-baloney statistics report that unemployment in Sweden today is above 5%. [Actually, roughly 15% of the Swedish workforce is unemployed today – the way that I reckon it.])
 
And the Swedish labour unions hurt the putative immigrants and refugees with their obsessive attempts to extract the maximum possible nominal wages counted in Crowns and Ören. The labour unions do not shy from victimizing those on the labour market who are weak – i.e. the members of such groups as the immigrants, refugees, and Sweden´s own youth. (For – immigrants, refugees and young people have an especially hard time getting themselves jobs when they are not permitted to work for a wage which is sufficiently low, counted in Crowns and Ören, so as to make it profitable for an employer to hire them.) “Defend the holy union scale wages – no matter what the cost!” is the labor unions´ policy.
 
But it is a mistake to believe that immigration constitutes a threat to the Swedish people´s welfare. Every single individual, without exception, who is willing and able to work to make a living constitutes an asset, not a burden or a threat. If only we Swedes permitted the immigrants and refugees to wage compete on “our” labour market – so that they could work instead of being forced to live on the dole – the welfare of us Swedes would not be diminished by immigration. Regardless of how massive the immigration was! For each individual immigrant would produce the value equivalent of what he himself consumed!
 

 
It is in fact not at all strange that both the semi-socialist forces in Sweden, i.e. the Social Democrats and the labour unions, want restrictions on immigration. For – hostility towards immigration is an expression of collectivism. The essence of collectivism is the premise that people are fragments of groups (i.e. of “collectives”). So – according to the collectivist mentality humanity is divided up into “us” and “them”.
 
There are many variations on the theme of “us against them”. For example: “Class against class”. "Nation against nation”. “Race against race”. “Our gang against those other gangs.” Conflict between “our collective” and the “other collectives” is an essential preoccupation of the consciousness of the collectivist. Collectivism does not in fact lead to the “brotherhood of man”. Quite the opposite! Collectivism leads to conflict between rival gangs. And eventually to a war of all against all. History has demonstrated that this applies to all three of the major flavours of collectivism: socialism, nationalism and racism. All three of them!
 
Notice that the most frequent argument of the populistic and xenophobic Sweden Democrats is the one that “mass immigration is a threat to the Swedish people´s welfare”.
 
And ask yourself the question “What is the Social Democrats´ argument against the fully free immigration which is advocated by some “extreme”, i.e. unusually consistent, liberals?
 
Well – it is merely this: “Too much immigration would be a threat to the Swedish people´s welfare!” Now, that is pathetic! The truth is that the Sweden Democrats advocate the same type of immigration policy as the Social Democrats – with the same type of arguments to boot – but with the difference that they – SD – do so in a more “extreme”, i.e. more consistent, form. The logic of the Sweden Democrats goes like this: “If the small restrictions on immigration advocated by the Social Democrats are a good thing – then the really extensive restrictions on immigration advocated by us must in reason be a great thing! No half-measures please!”
 
To be sure, the Social Democrats huff and puff about how awful the Sweden Democrats are for agitating against immigration. And SAP tries hard to turn the Sweden Democrats into pariahs. But all that is merely the tactic of creating a diversion. The truth is that – sure – the Sweden Democrats are the most rabid opponents of immigration in Sweden.
 
But at the same time the truth also is that the Social Democrats themselves are the most powerful and therefore the most potent opponents of extensive immigration in Sweden. The Social Democrat establishment trashes the name of the Sweden Democrats for the sake of diverting attention from themselves – so that the radical egalitarian forces in the “worker movement” can continue to believe that Big Lie that the Social Democrats never fail to fight for the interests of the weak. The leadership of the Swedish worker movement tries hard to sweep its own hypocrisy under the rug.
 
The Swedish government´s Bureau of Statistics (SCB) has found that roughly twice as many new Sweden Democrat voters came from the Social Democrats, the Communists and the Greens as came from the Agrarians, Liberals and Conservatives in the election of 2010. And – according to SCB roughly one in six members of the blue collar labour union federation (LO) sympathized with the Sweden Democrats. The Sweden Democrats were (in the year 2010, when I wrote this debate piece) the second largest party among the members of LO!
 
The awful truth is that the Social Democrats´ many years of agitation in favour of the “Swedish Model” has cleared the road for the Sweden Democrats rabid hostility to immigration! The Sweden Democrats´ hostility to immigration is not an expression of a deviation from the “Swedish Model”. It is instead a morally depraved attempt to defend that very model!
 
So – to sum up. The Swedish worker movement has paved the road for the Sweden Democrats. SD simply exploit the opportunities for xenophobic agitation which the Social Democrats themselves have created - by dint of making Sweden safe for collectivism!
 

 

 
If socialism is a flavour of collectivism – and if collectivism is the cause of the hostility towards immigration – then there is but one logical conclusion to be drawn. If the Swedish people want to free themselves from their own equivalent of apartheid – that is to say, from our shameful restrictions on immigration – then we, the Swedish people, must take the radical step of rejecting all elements of socialism in Swedish politics – including the “Swedish Model” of socialism – i.e. the welfare state.
 
Comrades! Smash xenophobia and welfare statism!
 
Our long-range goal must be capitalism and the free immigration that goes with it!