Greta Thunberg is 23 years old. Six years have passed since her emotional address to the UN Climate Action Summit about the end of the world. She has since shifted her attention from climate activism to one fashionable left-wing cause after another, but her tone is as shrill as ever. The other day, she denounced Sweden’s migration policy as inhumane. Her conclusions, as usual, wrong. But she is at least right about one thing: Sweden has adopted an entirely new migration policy.
In Sweden, the system has until now often penalised the honest and rewarded the dishonest
For years, Sweden took more asylum seekers per capita than any other country in Europe. Now asylum numbers have fallen to their lowest level since 1985, even as pressure across the rest of the continent remains immense.
Last year, only 6,700 people applied for asylum in Sweden – a drop over 95 per cent compared to 2015. This is no coincidence. Since taking office in 2022, the conservative government has pursued an active policy to bring this about.
We are living through a new age of migration. The world is more populous than ever, and more people now have the means to move across continents. In 1900, Europe had roughly 300 million inhabitants and Africa around 140 million. Today the EU has about 450 million people, while Africa has well over 1.5 billion. Surveys show that almost half of Africans aged 18 to 24 want to emigrate. In the Middle East, it is more than half. The most common motive is simple enough: a better life.
