Swedish voters say no to immigration
Araminta Wordsworth
National Post
September 20, 2010 2:33 pm
Even Sweden, it appears, is tired of being a nation of open borders.
Jimmie Akesson, chairman of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, will enter Parliament at the head of a party with 20 seats after Sunday's election.
Often held up as an example of a country Canada should emulate high taxes, plentiful social services, hockey players who dont fight Sweden appears to be going the way of the Netherlands, that other allegedly tolerant country that makes an exception when it comes to immigrants.
On Sunday, Fredrik Reinfeldts centre-right coalition won marginally under 50% of the vote in Swedens general election and will take 172 of the 349 seats. The Prime Minister also logged a personal victory by winning more votes for his party, the Moderates, than ever before.
Also entering Parliament for the first time will be the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, with 20 seats. Their success follows a string of electoral gains for similar parties across Europe in such countries as the Netherlands, France, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Britain.
As in much of the rest of Europe, immigration was the issue that propelled them into power, more specifically Muslim immigration. Relative to its size, Sweden has been among the top five nations in the European Union in taking in refugees and asylum-seekers, including those fleeing the Balkan wars of the 1990s and Iraq after the U.S. invasion.
The new arrivals have changed the demography of the once-homogenous Scandinavian country. Today, one in seven residents is foreign-born. The Sweden Democrats say immigration has become an economic burden that drains the welfare system, one of the most generous in Europe.
Sanna Rayman, a correspondent for the conservative Svenska Dagbladet newspaper, says the elections results were predictable.
Sweden is a baffled country today. At least seemingly so, at the surface. Every newspaper seems surprised by the fact that a populist/anti-immigration party the Sweden Democrats has made it into parliament. Every politician has, in some way, expressed his or her feelings of shock. This is despite the fact that everyone saw it coming The polls have been telling us as much for a long time, and everyone knows that the Sweden Democrats have a habit of coming out stronger than their poll results. This is also a part of the problem. For decades, the Sweden Democrats have been on the rise in the polls. No-one has taken this threat seriously the only response has been to demonize, not only the party, but more importantly the people who consider voting for them. This has made the job of polling agencies difficult, since the shame factor makes people lie to opinion pollsters. But one also suspects that this demonization has actually contributed to the SD rise.
At The Daily Telegraph, Bruno Waterfield and Matthew Day report on the partys rise and rise.
The previously marginal group entered the mainstream by demanding cuts to immigration and by describing Islam as Swedens biggest national security threat since the Second World War. Its election broadcasts, showing burka-clad Muslim women jumping the queue to take benefits from white Swedish pensioners, fuelled resentment over waves of immigration which have changed the make-up of Sweden, a once-homogenous Scandinavian country, where one in seven residents is now foreign-born. The immigration policy is the most important issue in this election and we want that to be debated and we want the other parties to change their policy, said Jimmie Akesson, the groups leader.
Andrew Brown believes reporting from outside Sweden has helped fuel the xenophobia.
If you believe the international right-wing press, the answer is simple, and has been since 2004, when Fox News made a special report on the subject: Sweden, and especially Malmo, has become a laboratory for the creeping Islamization of Europe. The most common childs name there is now Muhammad; police dare not go into immigrant districts, where only sharia law is respected; and soon all the Jews will be driven from the city. All this, flecked with varying amounts of spittle, is recounted as fact on the net and in U.S. papers
No one in Sweden believes there is any serious terrorist threat there, but Islam has become the symbol of all that is strange and menacing and un-Swedish about immigration.
The BBCs Gavin Hewitt analyzes the roots of the anti-immigrant backlash.
Firstly, there is the economy. There are fewer jobs. Fewer outsiders are needed. But the economic downturn provides only part of the answer. In both Germany and Sweden the economy is rebounding strongly.
There seems to be a growing fear about identity, of living in a fast-changing society where peoples known world recedes.
Much of this new populism is built on questioning whether Muslims can ever successfully integrate into the West. If they cant, so the argument goes, then Europe risks developing into separate, parallel communities. Many Muslims argue that they are barred from fully integrating into society, and so assert their own identity
This new populist movement should neither be exaggerated but neither can it be ignored. At its root it raises fundamental questions about the type of society Europeans want to live in. These parties tap into a desire for new arrivals to become European.
compiled by Araminta Wordsworth
awordsworth@nationalpost.com
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COMMENTS :
:52 PM on September 20, 2010
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Yes!!!
And I'm no right wing tory. Even rank and file Liberals think the system is broken and we have to re-examine the issue.
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mikeowen1000
2:21 PM on September 20, 2010
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Hopefully Canada takes a harder line on immigration as well.
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Drew4
2:27 PM on September 20, 2010
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Canada needs to follow suit. It's costing Canadian tax payers $88,000/day for legal aid lawyers for the last boatload of illegal immigrants and yet we have to have fund raising drives to raise money for our disabled veterans. What's wrong with this picture?
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crocodile dundee
2:33 PM on September 20, 2010
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Yes, of course, it's 'xenophobic' for people to want to protect their customs, language and ethnic identity. But perfectly laudable for immigrants not to assimilate, not to learn the language of the host country and to demand sharia law. Makes perfect sense.
Dolts like Andrew Brown can't seem to figure this out.
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Sassylassie
2:38 PM on September 20, 2010
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What race is Islam again? Oh that's right it's a religious/political ideology and not a race. Second it's also a Supremacists Political Ideology which espouses the forced conversion of non-Muslims using a three step process: Ffirst using niceness, then a kaffir tax, and then threats of death. Oh yea the rightwing bigots are the problem, sure leftards. Canadian Culture or Sharia Law oh gee it's real hard to decide if I want to live in an advance society or go back to the middle ages and live by a medieval barbaric man made laws that kill just about anyone who insults their dead prophet.
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Had It
2:41 PM on September 20, 2010
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If they wanted to “be like us”, then they would gladly be like us. Think back to immigration after WW2, an amazing sucess story that built the modern democracies which cause us all to flourish.
The problem here, as elsewhere, is that they want us to be like them, the same “them” that they are purportedly running away from.
Everyone sees the sense of the argument, and honestly, there shouldn't have to be one.
Thank God for the Sweden Democrats, and all other clear thinkers.
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Rustee24
2:46 PM on September 20, 2010
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Nice to see that people in some of the western world can actually express their desire to have their country reflect their values, traditions and history and not flush it all away in some faux concern for 'diversity'.
What a &^(*(*%$ concept.
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canuck172
2:46 PM on September 20, 2010
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Right on. It seems other countries are beginning to see reality and Canada needs to take action. France has taken a tiny step with banning face coverings and Quebec has done a little less with refusing public services unless people uncover their faces. Canada needs to do more.
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BruceWilliams
3:07 PM on September 20, 2010
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Canada certainly needs to do more, but will not until the special interest and a left leaning begin to suffer the results of our staying on our current path. Under our current system, where every difference requires special allowances and multi-governmental funding, the above groups live in political bliss while the country is systematically destroyed.
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ObserverGuy
3:13 PM on September 20, 2010
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Wow, these arguments are WAY different than the ones raised against past waves of immigrants… Unless you are a native, you are the descendant of immigrants who faced exactly the same type of prejudices.
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I am not a redneck
3:22 PM on September 20, 2010
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Ageing population, low fertility (1.6 vs. 2.1 needed for replacement), no immigration. Sounds like voluntary extinction to me.
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Watchdog43
3:30 PM on September 20, 2010
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The Canadian electorate has never been asked to vote on immigration . It has been forced down our throat because big business wants labor and wealthy people want domestic servants.
Let us have our say . It's not xenophbic to want to keep a strong cultural identity . That's what countries are for..
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Had It
3:32 PM on September 20, 2010
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Lets be clear here, there is no past “wave of immigrants” as a previous poster stated, who have EVER attmepted to destroy the country, the people, the societies which they supposedly turned to for help as immigrants. Only Muslims seem to be capable of doing this, anywhere in the world, everywhere in the world, and with any country in the world.
Hmmmm, wonder why Swedes are questioning the value of Muslim immigration?
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Watchdog43
3:45 PM on September 20, 2010
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Immigrants needed for growth ???
I just came back from a visit to Toronto where I lived 25 years ago .. Toronto has gone to hell .
Too much traffic , too many immigrants , too much pollution , too many high-rises stocked with welfare recipients ,to muc noise , hustle and bustleand crime . The city I knew is gone , it's not safe to walk the streets , shootings every night , thousands of disgruntled white people wondering what happened. And their property taxes paying to accomodate our “guests” .
The Anglo/Europeans are now a minority , invaded by foreigners who never had to fire a shot.
Enough. I can't imagine raising children here. At what price growth ??
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crocodile dundee
3:55 PM on September 20, 2010
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Hey Watchdog43, you should be happy that as a white person you are now a minority in Toronto. After all, the local lefty politicians, academics and journalists always trot out the 'minorities now are the majority in Toronto' line…..but never give a reason why this is somehow good. Guess it must be because whitey is the cause of all racism, xenophobia and trouble in the world and we must be a dumping ground.
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captcanuck
4:00 PM on September 20, 2010
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Could it be that the winds of nationalism are blowing across the western (white) world? We have experimented with mass immigration, multi-culturalism and so called “diversity” the project has been a dismal failure. Time to get back to our roots and be a proud people again.
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newsreader60
4:11 PM on September 20, 2010
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It is misleading to compare Canada to Sweden, when it comes to immigration. Sweden, and the other European countries mentioned in the article, are one nation states with an indigenous population and culture in which immigrants are expected to melt into. In those countries national identity is attached to territorial identity and it is expressed in a unique, homogenous language, culture and history.
Canada is a land of immigrants, from all different cultures. The common denominator among Canadians is not common mother tongue, history or culture but the fact that everybody is coming from another culture/country, and lives peacefully with each other despite the differences.
To compare Canadian and Swedish immigration is like comparing apples and oranges. Laws and immigration policies that could be seen in Sweden as a necessary steps to preserve national identity (language and culture), in Canada will become xenophobic regulations.
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jsland
4:12 PM on September 20, 2010
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I've been reading a lot about Islam and its recent history to figure out for myself what on earth is going on. One has to go back to the events following the Ottoman Empire at least to make sense of the news today. Islam is not a culture nor a race. it is a late religion begun, as far as I can see, with the hope that it one day could build a religious state. 5th Century Christianity shared this goal, and it took nearly 1,000 years to loose its military and cultural Roman baggage. Followers of Islam cannot practice privately inside a religion unrelated to the institutions and laws of the state in which they live, unless the current more Islamic fundamentalist movement which began to seized the Islamic world after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire looses steam. I grew up in Toronto, and there is no cultural group I feel negative about but those -including those in Christian circles – which want to marry state laws with one particular religious expression of justice and worship. These are the Fundamentalist groups, and the nation states they have taken over, that make us very uncomfortable today in the west. We drastically need to learn more about our own formulations of rights and freedoms, the origins of what we believe, and above all, we need to start a global conversation about applying a more accurate and practical application of our beliefs to social institutions world-wide, the global environment, and to the regulation of our global economy.
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Straightup
4:18 PM on September 20, 2010
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“the media seems surprised…” Thank god for that! Listening to the BBC that interviewed some key folks brought out the fact that the media in Sweden did everything they could to thrwart the party but low and behold they won 20 seats regardless.
Now if we could just get more folks in this nation to ignore the media we might just get somewhere…
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anonymous
4:21 PM on September 20, 2010
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The way I see it is anyone who came to Canada here ILLEGALLY, change the laws for the sake of RELIGION, or if their ancestors came here through the use of FORCE should be DEPORTED. These are NOT Canadian values.
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Straightup
4:22 PM on September 20, 2010
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…and here's to the people of Sweden who clearly drank too much of the liberal style koolaide and got sick [and tired] of being fleeced to support some poorly thought out scheme to maintain votes and expand bureaucracy…
Expensive isn't it…
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fidelprodemocracy
4:31 PM on September 20, 2010
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I am an inmigrant, why will you emigrate if you do not like the country the laws and the culture of your adopted country???? I did not come here to make all canadians catholic or for them to learn spanish, call me any name you want but that is the truth.
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anonymous
4:32 PM on September 20, 2010
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This article is a bit misleading.
It seems that all the world's media is focusing on the Sweden Democrats… but they only got about 5.7% of votes.
5.7% of Sweden's population voted for them. That means in a country of 9200000, only about 500000 people voted for them.
No offense, but people here need to tune up their critical thinking skills.
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Mukergee
4:35 PM on September 20, 2010
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I am slowly seeing a glimmer of hope that our political parties will be forced to acknowledge the new Canadian reality that voters have had enough of our 'heritage identity' being subsumed by political correctness and multi-culti feelgoodism. And yet notice that European media is frothing at the mouth describing the Sweden Democrats as “far right”, as a “threat” and as “marginal”. Can anyone explain why a “populist” party is somehow evil? I'd describe it as representative government.
Do we need to start a new anti-immigration party too or will the Conservatives have the courage and leadership to move us in the proper direction? It sure as he** won't be the Libs or Dippers.
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anonymous
4:39 PM on September 20, 2010
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This article conveniently fails to mention that the Sweden Democrats tried to cater to Muslim voters by taking a hard stance on homosexuality.
This is probably why they can get into parliament, but they will NEVER get a majority in Sweden — and these sorts of parties will never get a majority in anywhere else in Europe or North America. The kind of crazies who take anti-immigration positions, tend to turn away voters by taking anti- positions to issues that we are “liberal” about. And those issues that we are “liberal” about are the exact same issues that we hate about extremist Muslims.
