Swedish politicians and officials, of all people, are raising a revolutionary idea on refugees that I've been contemplating for several months.
They are questioning the justification for providing permanent residence and eventual citizenship for refugees and migrants who claim to be refugees.
The Washington Post reports today:
Instead of a permanent home in Sweden, new arrivals will be eligible only for a temporary stay of between one and three years, with the government vowing to accept no more than the minimum number of refugees required under European Union law."
The Swedes suddenly are talking about sustainability, and that is causing what the Post today calls an "abrupt reversal" in what had seemed an unlimited invitation to Mideast migrants to become refugees in Sweden.
. . . authorities say the changes were necessary, both for security reasons and to stem a flow of arrivals that was simply unsustainable."
Flows of migrants from all over the Mideast and Afghanistan reached 10,000 a week at one point this fall. The Swedes who pride themselves on trying to be more humanitarian than anybody else reached their breaking point. The public -- and now their officials -- have insisted on much tougher rules to keep most migrants out, to remove unwelcome ones that get in and to provide only temporary refuge.
We can handle the 160,000 people who came this year," Swedish Migration Minister Morgan Johansson said. "But we can't handle it if there are another 160,000 next year."
The most dramatic move seems to be the pulling back from the idea that refuge has to be given for life.
It makes sense, doesn't it? The main impetus for a country taking in refugees and other uninvited migrants is to save their lives from home-country conditions caused by natural disaster, war or political persecution. Normally, those life-threatening conditions don't continue long-term, let alone for life.
Yes, conditions may remain tough after the emergency is over. But the point of refuge is to save people's lives, not provide an escape from a country's bad economic conditions.
Of course, migrants fleeing their country for safety should be sheltered in adjoining countries or at least in the same region -- not in some far away country like Sweden or the Untied States. No matter how unsustainable the flows might be allowed into those countries, the only hope for nearly all of the 19 million refugees outside their countries today would be to eventually go back home. By far the best way to help that happen is to keep migrants close to home. And it is by far the cheapest way to help the most people in the greatest way.
But in the rare cases when a case can be made that a group of refugees should be moved into a new region, why shouldn't that move be only for the time until it is safe again in the home country?
The Post says Sweden's new tough line may "spur domino effect of harsher policies" throughout Europe. But are these "harsher" policies or just the more practical and sustainable policies that the citizens of Europe are demanding in the handling of mass migrant flows?
ROY BECK is Founder & President of NumbersUSA
