Sweden will offer migrants $34k to go home

geox | 138 points

Context: Sweden's deadly gang war [1]

> Sweden's gun crime death rate is now the highest in the European Union.

> Statistics show that gang shooting suspects are predominantly of migrant background.

[1] https://news.sky.com/story/swedens-deadly-gang-war-has-turne...

janice1999 | 3 days ago

Lots of confusion about what a "migrant" is in this context and who is eligible for the compensation.

Here's the English language page about the repatriation compensation (currently 10,000 SEK):

https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/...

----

You can apply for the grant if you have a temporary or permanent residence permit in Sweden

    * as a refugee
    * as a quota refugee
    * as a person eligible for subsidiary protection
    * on the grounds of exceptionally distressing circumstances
    * or because of your connection to a person who has one of the residence permits listed above.
gerikson | 3 days ago

Would this attract more migrants? (e.g. I could work for a year for 10k, or I could go to Sweden and get 34k)

They've probably thought through all the ways to exploit this, just curious.

meowtimemania | 3 days ago

Any scheme that offers cash incentive has a high likelihood of inviting the Cobra Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive#The_origina....

penguin_booze | 3 days ago

Japan had a similar policy, with respect to legal immigrants it had made a point of recruiting, in the immediate wake of the global financial crisis. They'd buy (largely) Peruvian/Brazilian factory workers of Japanese descent a plane ticket and approximately $3k of compensation (IIRC) in return for them surrendering their work-compatible visa.

It was controversial, from a number of angles.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/global/23immigra...

patio11 | 3 days ago

In 2018 a report made by the Expert Group for Studies in Public Economics (ESO), which has studied the employment level of refugees between 1983 and 2015. The study shows, among other things, that the integration of refugees gradually deteriorated during the period, and that an average refugee represents a cost of SEK 74,000 per year for public finances.

There is considerable uncertainty in the calculations, but they indicate that the net redistribution via public finances to an average refugee over his or her entire lifetime in Sweden amounts to an average of SEK 74 000 per year.

Swedish article

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/ny-eso-rapport-flyktingin...

http://archive.today/6zwMH

https://web.archive.org/web/20240914135437/https://www.svt.s...

heraldgeezer | 3 days ago

These headlines grabbing schemes are fine but what really matters is the annual migration statistics. If 20k take up this offer but 40k new ones come then it was a failure at best and a smoke screen at worst.

Never trust a European politician who says they don't like immigration. Wait to see what their policies actually do to the figures

switch007 | 3 days ago

Definitely won't be abused. It even says they can leave and come back XD. Man it must be frustrating getting this shafted as a taxpayer.

djohnston | 3 days ago

This isn't a new approach. I know Norway used it after the Yugoslavian civil war (and especially the conflict in Kosovo), to encourage refugees to go home. I've also seen ads from some NGOs offering financial support for return.

vintermann | 3 days ago

Are Americans eligible?

rKarpinski | 3 days ago

Excellent. Get in to get welfare, get out to get even more welfare. And all this at taxpayer's expense.

Incredible how people are complacent with that.

jesterson | 3 days ago

Watching the new approach Germany is taking by closing borders, this seems like it might be a more viable option. 34k in some of the countries they fled from can move people to a new class of standing. Obviously that presupposes that they have a somewhat functional country to go back to (Yemen, Syria, etc) but I suppose it can’t hurt to try. It’s expensive to deport people anyway, so perhaps using the carrot instead of the stick will work more favorably.

The reality is that countries and governments are made of people. If you piss them off long enough, bad stuff is going to fester and violence will eventually come forth as the “only viable solution”. It’s up to policy makers and politicians to lead public discourse and try to find a solution.

I think the other thing though is that governments need to be more open about the consequences. We’re seeing this now in the Netherlands with the push of the new right wing government to cut immigration visas. But whoops, now we don’t have enough people to fill jobs and the tax base is being pushed to the edge to pay for social services that are only going to get more and more strained.

Without some form of immigration, the west as we know it will cease to function as the population ages and jobs are not filled. So sure, you can vote to keep the immigrants out, but just know you’ll probably die alone from a preventable complication because the home health nurse is stretched between 30 patients in a 24 hour period. Elections and choices alike have consequences and not voting is also a choice.

To end on Sweden again, im sure the rest of Europe will be watching this experiment very closely, though cynically I don’t think it will matter or have much of an effect.

yurishimo | 3 days ago

However the policy works in practice, giving people choices is very humane.

If someone has really good reason to stay, they don't take the offer.

nabla9 | 3 days ago

Economics 101:

- Successful Behavior Is Repeated - People Respond To Economic Incentives

focusgroup0 | 3 days ago

The entire point of being a refugee is that you can't go home. It sounds like a trick question. "Haha, if you could go home then you're not really a refugee, so we're deporting you instead."

Perhaps that explains why almost nobody applied and only one got it last year. Many would love to go home. They just can't.

jfengel | 3 days ago

What is the purpose of the 34k? Why not just put them on a plane back to their country of origin?

Are they not able to be found?

muaytimbo | 2 days ago

As a french, am I eligible?

aloisdg | 3 days ago

The fine print: Of 250,000 migrants 70 applied for the grant and one got it.

If your goal is to send people home here’s how you do it. Hire 50 lawyers to help migrants apply for the grant and provide translation assistance. You’ll 100x the applicants and 10x the success rate. Anything else is useless chatter.

more_corn | 2 days ago
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| 3 days ago

> Money set aside for repatriation may be better spent on integrating refugees and other migrants, through programs like language lessons, job assistance and training, which could help newcomers build a future in Sweden, she said.

So just to be clear, a Neo-Nazi political group rebranded, and has successfully passed a law to use significant amounts of taxes to deport immigrants instead of using the same amount of money to integrate them?

AndrewKemendo | 2 days ago

Addition by Subtraction in action.

erichocean | 2 days ago

Why not accept the money and apply for asylum in another country?

vinni2 | 3 days ago

[flagged]

jmyeet | 3 days ago

[flagged]

stareatgoats | 3 days ago

[flagged]

bitcharmer | 3 days ago

This is claimable more than once.

throwaway48476 | 3 days ago

Would you accept $34k to move to Syria? I have no idea who this incentive is designed for. The (financial) opportunity cost alone totally swamps the incentive before we even consider the risk in living in a volatile dictatorship.

On a macro level, moving people from functional, high-productivity countries to failed states makes even less sense. Totally hapless policy from Sweden here.

sobellian | 3 days ago