Sweden’s center-right government, which is grappling with the highest crime rate in northern Europe and an increasingly out-of-control security situation precipitated by many years of left-liberal, pro-mass migration policies, appears to be taking action in an attempt to reverse, or at the very least slow down its societal turmoil.
So far this year, Säpo, Sweden’s security service, which is responsible for maintaining the country’s national security, has prevented over 600 migrants, a record number, from obtaining Swedish citizenship, the news agency TT reported.
The number of naturalization rejections so far this year marks at least a 308% increase compared to 2019 when the security services objected to 147 applications for naturalization.
Reasons for naturalization rejections can include evidence of harboring extremist sympathies, having committed serious crimes in other countries, suspicion of war crimes, or connection to adversarial foreign countries.
Presently, there exists no legal mechanism in Sweden that allows for the residence permit of an individual who has been deemed a security threat to be revoked if they have resided in the country for more than three years.
However, now, in light of the rapidly deteriorating security situation, and with the Swedish state woefully unprepared and undermanned to truly rectify the problem, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s government—in an attempt to attenuate the country’s ever-worsening social maladies—appears to be exploring the possibility of extending the three-year deadline or, in some cases, removing it altogether. The government is also looking to expand the number of legal grounds on which a residency permit can be revoked.
Days ago, in an opinion editorial penned for Stockholm-based newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard (M), Sweden Democrat MP Ludvig Aspling, Christian Democrat MP Ingemar Kihlström, and Liberal MP Mauricio Rojas argued in favor of lowering the hurdles for revoking Swedish residence permits and denying Swedish citizenship.
“Anyone who can be assumed to conduct activities with links to terrorism or state-controlled corporate espionage should not only be denied Swedish citizenship but also be able to lose their residence permit,” the group wrote.
The news comes a month after Jimmie Åkesson, the leader of the national-conservative Sweden Democrats (SD) party, called for migrants with criminal records and those with dual nationalities who refuse to integrate into Swedish society to have their Swedish citizenship revoked.
Speaking to the Swedish newspaper Expressen, Åkesson said:
What we have said so far is that you should be able to look at citizenship for terrorists and for gang criminals. These types of crime are put on an equal footing. That means that you are abandoning the principle of equality before the law. And once you’ve started doing that, you can actually take that reasoning further. And I am absolutely prepared to do so, in the situation we are in.
We have a situation where people live in Sweden, as citizens of Sweden, but they still can’t speak Swedish. They have no connection whatsoever to Swedish society. They are only here to commit crimes. They bring down the reputation of Swedish citizenship and Swedish passports internationally. Sweden now needs to get away from all this … I don’t think there’s any other solution than to start looking at tearing up citizenships.
The Kristersson administration has asked the European Commission to strengthen the protections against immigrants who constitute a security threat.
“The terrorist attacks in Brussels show that the Union is only as strong as its weakest link,” Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said.
Sweden has also requested that the issue be included on the agenda at the European Council meeting in December, with items to be discussed including increased border controls at EU’s external borders; increased exchange of information between member states; improved usage of EU databases and information systems; a halt to the financing of terrorism; the passing of the Asylum and Migration pact; and an EU-wide focus on effective deportations.
As The European Conservative previously reported, the number of fatal shootings in Sweden reached a new peak in 2022, surpassing the previous record set in 2020, with 47 people having lost their lives as a result of gun violence. As of October 13th, 48 people had been killed in fatal shootings in 2023.