Stockholm: Sweden has announced to give 350,000 Swedish kronor ($34,000) to immigrants who voluntarily leave the country.
In a major immigration policy shift, the Scandinavian country, which was for decades seen as a “humanitarian superpower”, has been now struggling to integrate many of its newcomers.
A top official announced that immigrants who voluntarily return to their countries of origin from 2026 would be eligible to receive up to 350,000 Swedish kronor.
“We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our migration policy,” Migration Minister Johan Forssell told reporters at a recent press conference, as the government presented its latest move to crack down on migration.
Currently, immigrants can receive up to 10,000 kronor per adult and 5,000 kronor per child, with a cap of 40,000 kronor per family. Immigrants groups could not immediately be reached for comment on the change, AFP reported.
“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 told reporters.
Forssell said only one person had accepted the offer last year. Aspling added that if more people were aware of the grant and its size was increased, more would likely take the money and leave.
He said the incentive would most likely appeal to the several hundred thousand migrants who were either long-term unemployed, jobless or whose incomes were so low they needed state benefits to make ends meet. “That’s the group we think would be interested,” Aspling said.
A government-appointed probe last month advised the government against significantly hiking the amount of the grant, saying the expected effectiveness did not justify the potential costs.
The Nordic nation has struggled for years to integrate immigrants, and the head of the inquiry, Joakim Ruist, said that a sizeable financial increase would send a signal that migrants were undesirable, further hampering integration efforts. Other European countries also offer grants as an incentive for migrants to return home.
Denmark pays more than $15,000 per person, compared to around $1,400 in Norway, $2,800 in France and $2,000 in Germany.
Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson came to power in 2022 with a minority government propped up by the Sweden Democrats, vowing to get tough on immigration and crime. The Sweden Democrats emerged as the second-largest party. Sweden has offered generous foreign development aid since the 1970s and has taken in large numbers of migrants since the 1990s.