Sweden Says To Pay Immigrants Up To $34,000 To Leave The Country

Has rationality made its way to Sweden?

According to an announcement that Sweden’s center-right coalition government made on September 12, 2024,  Sweden plans to increase payments to up to $34,000 to immigrants who leave the Nordic nation. 

For several decades, Sweden has received large numbers of non-white migrants — a trend that grew exponentially in the 2010s and has turned into a political crisis. 

Immigrants who voluntarily go back to their countries of origin from 2026 would be able to receive up to 350,000 Swedish kronor ($34,000), from the government. 

"We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our migration policy," Migration Minister Johan Forssell said to reporters. 

Currently immigrants are able to receive up to 10,000 kronor for each adult and 5,000 kronor for each child. Each family can also receive up to 40,000 kronor

"The grant has been around since 1984, but it is relatively unknown, it is small and relatively few people use it," Ludvig Aspling of the Sweden Democrats — the largest right-wing party in the right-wing coalition of the Riksday (Swedish legislature) said to reporters.

Forssell claims that only one person had accepted the offer in 2023.

Aspling continued by noting that if more people were made aware of the grant and its size was increased, more migrants would likely take the money and leave the country.

He believes that this monetary incentive would most likely appeal to the several hundred thousand migrants who were either unemployed in the long-term, jobless or whose incomes were so low they needed government benefits just to make ends meet.

"That's the group we think would be interested," Aspling stated.

Other European nations provide grants as an incentive for migrants to go back home. Denmark pays more than $15,000 for each individual, compared to just $1,400 in Norway, $2,800 in France, and $2,000 in Germany.

Sweden's Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson came to power in 2022 by pacting with the Sweden Democrats, promising to pass tougher policies on immigration and crime.

The Sweden Democrats became Sweden’s second-largest party with 20.5% support in the 2022 election.

Sweden has doled out significant amounts of foreign aid since the 1970s and has taken in large numbers of migrants since the 1990s.

The majority of Sweden's immigrants have come from countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and the former Yugoslavia. 

In 2015, when the migration crisis in Europe was at its peak, Sweden received 160,000 asylum seekers, the highest per capita figure in the EU.

Due to how migrants largely end up being unemployed, Sweden’s lavish welfare system has been placed under great stress. The 2015 migration crisis put the country over the edge, as the Swedish ruling class realized that it could no longer take in more migrants from the Global South. 

Since then, Swedish governments — both center-Left and center-Right — have implemented measures such as the issuance of only temporary residence permits to asylum seekers, bolstering family reunifications requirements, and increasing income requirements for work visas for non-EU citizens.

Kristersson's government has plans to facilitate the expulsion of migrants for substance abuse, association with criminal organizations or statements that threaten Swedish values.

Mass migration is a noxious experiment that must go the way of the dodo if Western countries like Sweden are going to exist in the future. Continuing this dangerous social experiment risks having countries like Sweden disappearing into the ether.