66 comments

  • cidd 2 hours ago

    > The Riksdag voted in favour of the Government’s proposal which includes the abolition of permanent residence permits for people in need of protection and people who have been long-term residents in Sweden, as well as their relatives.

    >The proposal is one component of the efforts to adapt Sweden’s regulatory framework for the granting of international protection and asylum procedures to the minimum guarantees set out in EU law. The purpose of the adaptation is to create better conditions for integration and to reduce social exclusion by reducing asylum-related immigration.

    Not all route for permanent residence. Only for asylum seekers. Employment or academic based route are still there it seems.

    • belorn an hour ago

      Employment and academic status are not permanent, nor are visum based on those without conditions.

      Permanent residence was more akin to citizenship in that they were permanent and mostly unconditional. The discussion in Sweden around them often came into a discussion around what the difference between citizenships and permanent residence, and if that difference was meaningful.

      The practical difference between Permanent residence and citizenship was that:

      Swedish citizenship allows a person to be elected into parliament, employed by the police or work in the military.

      Swedish citizenship are treated by other countries as Swedish citizens according to international relationships.

      Swedish citizens that live aboard can vote in Swedish elections

      That was it. Without permanent residence people need to become citizens to get the same rights as citizenship, as all other form of visums has conditions and limits.

      • foogazi 18 minutes ago

        Those are significant differences - I didn’t find anything saying Swedish born citizenship can be taken away.

        While permanent residency can be taken away due to moving away from Sweden or for criminal activity

        Only Swedish criminals can remain in Sweden - probably good for RoW

    • darth_avocado 2 hours ago

      Correct. This is decoupling LTR from Permanent residency, not banning permanent residency.

  • FridayoLeary 2 hours ago

    The asylum system is being massively abused. It's turning people in the UK into single issue voters.

  • TMWNN 2 hours ago

    Context: Until very recently, Sweden had no language, income, employment, or skills requirement for citizenship, of which permanent residency was a pathway for. It now, as of 2026, has some basic requirements in these areas.

    * 2025 citizenship requirements: <https://web.archive.org/web/20250315034218/https://www.migra...>

    * 2026: <https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/...>

    In completely unrelated news, Arabic is now the second most spoken language in Sweden after Swedish. <http://web.archive.org/web/20210511231225/https://digitaledi...>.

  • pembrook 2 hours ago

    American millennials who grew up fetishizing Europe as a progressive/socialist utopia are in for a rude awakening over the next couple of years. People forget Europe is a collection of literal ethno-states.

    Europe is in a very dire place economically and anti-immigrant anger is reaching a boiling point in many countries (easier to point fingers at brown people than face up to decades of poor policy choices you yourself voted for).

    At least Sweden is in relatively "better" shape than its peers. Germany, France, the UK, are also all drinking this cocktail but much worse; fiscally insolvent, unwilling to have kids, unwilling to pivot to new economic models, and scapegoating brown people while staring down the barrel of never-ending benefits cuts and tax increases (which will further kill their economy).

    This is just the tip of the iceberg.

    While Americans were ritually flogging themselves for being racist during the 2010s, nobody seemed to bother asking the question "Compared to what?"

    Well, it turns out in the "progressive utopia" of the Nordics, immigrants face some of the highest rates of job discrimination in the developed world, with Sweden being in the worst group [1]. The US on the other hand is all the way on the other end of the spectrum, almost egalitarian in hiring by comparison.

    [1] https://sociologicalscience.com/download/vol-6/june/SocSci_v...

  • martythemaniak 2 hours ago

    There's no population or fertility crisis. The world's population isn't going to fall, it'll level off around 2100, nobody old enough to read this will be around, our kids and grandkids can decide for themselves.

    Local populations will see very different trajectories, yes. Africa will see population growth and many other places will see steep decline. Societies can choose to keep their current system and take in immigrants, or choose to keep their "national character" (or whatever) and rejig their societies so the remaining productive parts pay for increasing numbers of old people. Grifters (Brexiters, MAGA, Le Pen, etc) will attempt to sidestep such obvious tradeoffs, but they will fail, hastening the decline of these societies. So the only crisis we have is people refusing to deal with reality's tradeoffs.

    • FridayoLeary 2 hours ago

      Happens to be the grifters are mostly pro fertility, make of that what you want.

      • obelos 2 hours ago

        They're pro-“fertility talking points” at least, but rarely in favor of economic and social policies that encourage child rearing.

        • martythemaniak an hour ago

          I think so too. What strikes me most about "pro fertility" people, particularly the SV type, is that they don't seem to particularly like kids, as in spending time with them, playing with them, deriving joy from them. They seem very enamoured with the kids-as-cogs-in-the-system, with "legacy" with all sorts of other silliness except for the kids as kids.

  • fleroviumna 3 hours ago

    [dead]

  • euio757 3 hours ago

    Easy to make a snarky comments at Democrats US who always love to say “Follow the Nordic Model” “Follow Scandinavian countries” on almost every topic... Safe to say they wouldn't agree here.

    But serious question here: What happened in Sweden that lead to this parliament move?

    • satvikpendem 2 hours ago

      Europe in general is seeing a reversal in their philosophy towards migrants, especially from the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey (MENAPT is the acronym governments use). It's probably the lack of integration into the host cultures and ghettoization of many areas. Japan is doing something similar too to the article.

    • ochrist 2 hours ago

      Just guessing it has to do with this: https://nri.today/swedens-crisis-immigration-bloodshed/

    • Procrastes 2 hours ago

      > Democrats US who always love to say “Follow the Nordic Model”

      past performance is not indicative of future results

      I'm not about to run out and suggest Finnish lunches or buy a tin of Surströmming for breakfast, but it might be nice to have a balanced budget.

      • ribs 2 hours ago

        Hold on hold on hold on, tell me about Finnish lunches, as from searching they sound pretty innocuous. (Surströmming I know of, no questions there)

    • djoldman 2 hours ago

      Follow the Nordic model has never been anything but a fantasy.

      All the Scandinavian countries put together have slightly more people than the NYC metro area and are extremely homogeneous in terms of ethnicity, religiosity, etc. as compared to the USA.

      In short, it's never been a good policy testbed for the much much larger and more diverse USA.

    • sakex 2 hours ago

      Too much immigration too quick, people got fed up from what I gather

    • bwhiting2356 3 hours ago
    • noncoml 2 hours ago

      > Safe to say they wouldn't agree here

      Maybe because they do not like to blindly follow the "leader", but instead prefer to judge for themselves?

      Democrats don't want "bad" immigration as much as you do. No-one wants criminals or people who are unwilling to follow the law.

      I am not an immigration expert, but blanket rules and blanket statements are seldom giving good results.

      When the right says ban immigrants they sounds as stupid as when the left says ban billionaires.

      • quaverquaver 2 hours ago

        marginal tax rates reached 94% in 1944 on income over 200k in the US. The high marginal tax regime gave rise to a period of relative equality. Nothing stupid about it - if a long right tail is a social ill (it is) then why have it?

        • noncoml 2 hours ago

          That's different than chanting "Ban Billionaires"

          • AngryData an hour ago

            Who would still be a billionaire at that tax rate?

            • jleyank 10 minutes ago

              Depends on what’s taxed at 94%. If it’s wages, they’ll just switch to passive 8ncome or stock/loans as they use now. If it’s all income, there’s going to be total change in the us compensation system.

    • flossly 2 hours ago

      [flagged]

      • jooize 2 hours ago

        In the efforts of all political parties to reject the nazi party, they also refused to admit anything the nazi party ever said could have any degree of reality in it.

    • dataflow 2 hours ago

      I imagine they don't want to end up where the US is now.

      Edit: is reality too upsetting for folks? Hopefully nobody was asleep when American candidates ran on immigration policy, their constituents voted based on that, and we ended up with the current politicians and the overall status quo? Or do people not see a causal chain here?

      • ForHackernews 2 hours ago

        You mean the wealthiest country in the world with a thriving, educated, well-integrated Muslim population that earns well above the national average income?

        • combyn8tor 2 hours ago

          People don't want to live in a mansion when it's on fire.

  • groos 2 hours ago

    They can ban immigration from the third world all they want but at some point, they'll have to confront the economic reality of a 1.42/couple fertility rate.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden

    • satvikpendem 2 hours ago

      That's every country these days, no one has a solution. Even giving people tens of thousands of dollars doesn't seem to help. It's not necessarily a problem with an economic solution, much as people like to say that it's due to poor work environments etc, because poor people have way more kids than middle class or rich people.

      • tcmart14 2 hours ago

        Raising kids is expensive and tens of thousands doesn't cover any significant portion.

        However, it's not just money alone that is the problem. Money helps a lot, but like any complicated problem, it's got multiple front. Money for one, but another is just child care in general. This is based on my experience and other parents I interact with, but child care is fucked up. Not just costs. When I was growing up, my grand parents were very involved. They would watch my sister and I in the evenings sometimes or take us for a weekend or we would go to their house to swim in the summer. For some period, my grandparents had us in the summer while mom and dad were working. There is a phrase of, "it takes a village to raise a kid." And that village was close family and friends. Grand parents would pick us up from after school events. Aunt and uncle would watch us with their kids and my parent would watch theirs, vice-versa. It was grand parents, neighbors, aunts and uncles. Now looking at me raising my kids and my friends doing the same, it all on just the two of us (myself and spouse). Grand parents don't want shit to do with their grand kids unless it's Christmas diner. And that is a pretty common thread amongst every other parent I interact with. And day care doesn't exactly solve that. Day care solves the regularly scheduled care Monday through Friday during business hours. Not even forgetting that some places, where I live, its a 9 month wait list to get into any daycare. And then full-time care pretty much consuming and entire parent's paycheck. It doesn't solve the, dad's car broke down, Mom needs to go pick him up and help out, but can't exactly pack the kids up. When that happened to my mom and dad, mom dropped me and my sister off with my grand parents.

      • pas 2 hours ago

        Tens of thousands of dollars? So ... nothing compared to real estate prices?

        Not to mention how nothing it is compared to the cost of certain child care activities that one might have to pay for if one has a child with any health, neurological, developmental issues.

        People are rightfully risk averse nowadays. Fuck the species if it just wants to bully its young into breeding.

      • s_dev 2 hours ago

        The solution is obvious:

        Remove commuting by encouraging remote work, incentivise dumb phone use or penalise smart phone use, create affordable property prices and secure future pensions, incentivise no televisions and create an environment where men and women can co-mingle naturally. You're right tens of thousands isn't going to cut it.

        Basically apartment complexes with plenty of facilities like cafes, libraries, parks, restaurants and sports facilities and micro mobility solutions for transport surrounded by nature. Effectively reversing some of the trends we've established over the past few decades.

        The reason this isn't done is because it wouldn't grow the economy, it would shrink the economy. You're effectively telling people to work less, have more leisure time and spend less.

      • Fire-Dragon-DoL 2 hours ago

        When you start giving something comparable to the actual cost of having a child, it's going to matter.

        You need more than one bedroom to have a child, that increases the price of a home in Vancouver by 200k. What should I do with tens if thousands?

      • nemomarx 2 hours ago

        I've been thinking about what kind of payment it would take, and I think trying to offset the potential career of one of the parents would do it.

        So maybe median salary for ten years or something for every couple with their first kid?

      • trhway 2 hours ago

        Immigration is the solution. Producing a child and getting it college educated costs, to the parents and society, $400K+ (a 22 years ordeal with a lot of risks like the child growing into a drug user, criminal, etc.) Bringing in a college graduate immigrant - close to $0 in 0 time.

        The same way like production of any products - if it is significantly cheaper to manufacture it say in China, it will be manufactured in China and imported, no matter what tariffs are, while domestic production will go down with overall increase of the efficiency of our civilization as a result.

        • satvikpendem 2 hours ago

          You can only immigrate a finite number of people. People in those countries also are below replacement like India which is unprecedented. This is nothing to say of the social backlash mass immigration seems to be having across many countries.

          • trhway 2 hours ago

            >You can only immigrate a finite number of people.

            The same like with any imports. Market responds to demand. China has 50M university students, US - 20M. That means that upon achieving US percentage (in probably 5-10 years) China can be having 80M students - sufficient enough to have some of that satisfy US demand for college graduates.

            > People in those countries also are below replacement like India which is unprecedented.

            Quick google shows that population growth in India is considered a problem, and so they actively trying to decrease birth rate.

            >This is nothing to say of the social backlash mass immigration seems to be having across many countries.

            Any technological (and mass migration is a result of technological progress) shifts and its consequences cause social stress. Successful societies adapt.

      • wat10000 2 hours ago

        I'm sure there's some level of payment that would do it. Tens of thousands sounds like a lot, but it's a bit of a joke for a something that costs 10x more and takes up decades of your life.

        • quaverquaver 2 hours ago

          ...but there is data that there are issues upstream - there are fewer couples to begin with! That is not economical (economies of scale) suggesting that we are looking at changes in social structure rather than some kind of aggregate economic adaptation.

      • groos 2 hours ago

        Every country? No. Every European country? Yes.

        • satvikpendem 2 hours ago

          Even India is below replacement now.

      • radicaldreamer 2 hours ago

        They can reduce or eliminate taxes on couples with kids...

    • IlikeMadison 2 hours ago

      It has been proven again and again that immigration, even massive like what happened in Sweden a decade or so ago, isn't even a solution to that problem, so I don't know what you are talking about.

    • hogehoge51 2 hours ago

      Indeed, and with the inguinuity and enterprise of the Swedes they may be able to separate the concerns of an assumed problem space and an assumed solution space.

      For now they seem to be dealing with observed problems, and applying actionable solutions. If they keep that up they may be able to resolve all manner of economic issues.

    • zemvpferreira 2 hours ago

      If all you need are labourers to prop up the economy there are billions of people willing to work on temporary visas.

    • toomuchtodo 2 hours ago

      Automation.

    • khazhoux 2 hours ago

      I don’t think “your population is drying up so you better replenish from other countries” is a winning pro-immigration argument.

  • advisedwang 2 hours ago

    The UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees Article 34 says:

    > The Contracting States shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalization of refugees. They shall in particular make every effort to expedite naturalization proceedings and to reduce as far as possible the charges and costs of such proceedings.

    Sweden is a signatory and seems to be in non-compliance.

    • torben-friis 2 hours ago

      About 2% of Sweden's population are refugees (!). For contrast, for the US the figure is 0.1%

      And it's not like they are in a border with an active war zone.

      • advisedwang 2 hours ago

        So? The convention says nothing about requiring a border with a conflict and nothing about a cap.

        • torben-friis 25 minutes ago

          So I think calling them out for not helping enough is going to involve a lot of glass houses.

        • zulux 2 hours ago

          As I understand, asylum seekers are to stop at the first safe country. They don't get to pick wherever they want.

          • advisedwang 2 hours ago

            Each state is independently obligated not to return a refugee to a place of danger. The convention allows countries to make agreements to deport refugees to safe 3rd parties or stop refugees from transiting (like the EU has with Turkey). If Sweden finds another place for these refugees that's legal (and then that country has the obligation to eventually naturalize them).

            Sweden is just not supposed to keep people in a permanent temporary state.

            (Also, many asylum seekers just get on a plane, and for them Sweden may well be their first stop)

    • bonzini 2 hours ago

      My understanding is that giving permanent residence means not naturalizing, and therefore this is a step towards compliance.

      • advisedwang 2 hours ago

        I'm not familiar with the Swedish system, but in the 2 immigration systems I am familiar with, permanent residence is a step you must take before naturalizing.

        • bonzini 2 hours ago

          Is one of those in the EU?

          • advisedwang 2 hours ago

            No, although a quick search shows France also operates on this principal. Is there any counterexamples you are thinking of?

            • bonzini an hour ago

              Italy has a long term residence card that is valid for 10 years, and renewable indefinitely, but the conditions for renew are absolutely not comparable to a green card for example. Just go out of the EU for a year and it's no more.

              https://www.poliziadistato.it/articolo/ec-residence-permit-f...

              This was adopted by Italy in 2007. So while I am not sure about it I suspect it's the same for all EU countries, since immigration papers are mostly governed by EU regulations and directives. What is your source for France having mandatory permanent residency prior to naturalization (unless it's permanent in the sense of renewable indefinitely)?

              Edit: indeed, this is a bill for adopting rules laid out in the EU directive on immigration and asylum.

    • IlikeMadison 2 hours ago

      Economic migrants are not refugees, try again.

      • advisedwang 2 hours ago

        The article specifically says "reducing asylum-related immigration"