Sweden and the Cost of Mass Immigration

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Sweden and the Cost of Mass Immigration
by Fjordman

In early 2014 Jan Tullberg, a researcher with a background from the Stockholm School of Economics, published a book about the impact mass immigration is having on Sweden. He estimated the costs of immigration to be around 250 billion Swedish kroner annually, roughly 7% of Sweden’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2013.

This is substantially higher than earlier estimates presented by professor Bo Södersten in 2003 of 40-50 billion kroner annually, and professor Jan Ekberg in 2009 of 45-60 billion kroner annually. The number of immigrants and their descendants keeps rising fast every year. However, Tullberg added certain indirect costs that were largely excluded from previous studies, such as increased crime and special education needs for immigrants.


[Header] Residence permits granted during the year — The number of reported rapes in the years 1980-2008 (Source Migration Board, BRÅ)

[Footer] (grey) Granted residence during the year — (red) Number of reported rapes during the year

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this number suggested by Jan Tullberg. However, if you divide 250 billion kroner by 9.7 million people, it amounts to nearly 26 thousand kroner per inhabitant per year. That’s nearly an average monthly wage in Sweden, before tax.

Yet this sum includes every single person living in Sweden, from babies to recent immigrants. The sum becomes even higher if you divide it by the number productive native citizens. If this is correct, it means that every native Swede starts his year by dedicating all of January to pay for a mass immigration that could render him a minority in his own country in a few decades. Only in February does he start earning money for himself. And these costs keep going up.

Predictably, Jan Tullberg’s book and its explosive content were met largely with silence from the established media, even though 2014 is a year of national elections in Sweden. This was also the case in 2013 when the ethnologist Karl-Olov Arnsberg and the journalist Gunnar Sandelin published their book Invandring och mörkläggning (“Immigration and Cover-up”), where they described sensitive facts about immigration. As the writer Elin Ørjasæter noted in Norway, the book by Arnsberg and Sandelin has sold thousands of copies, despite having met a near-total blackout from the heavily censored Swedish mainstream media.

The May 2013 riots in certain immigrant-dominated suburbs of Stockholm and other Swedish cities raised eyebrows abroad. While I found them disturbing, I cannot say that I was totally surprised by them. I had consistently warned about such a likely outcome under this pen name for nearly a decade.

A year later, there are still fears that similar riots could return at any moment. The underlying problems have not been resolved, and immigration continues at full speed. Other Swedish cities such as Gothenburg (Göteborg) and Malmö have been plagued by public gang shootings and the rise of foreign mafias on a scale that would have been unthinkable in Scandinavia just a few short years ago.

Some of this growing instability is threatening to spill across the border. Sweden’s diversity problems are gradually becoming a security threat to neighboring countries. There have been several documented cases where people from an immigrant background have traveled from Sweden to Norway to carry out crime there.

In 2012, a court found four Muslim men guilty of terrorism for planning an assault on the offices of the newspaper Jyllands-Posten in Copenhagen, Denmark. They were the Swedish citizens Munir Awad, Omar Abdalla Aboelazm and Sahbi Ben Mohamed Zalouti, plus one Tunisian national. These men were arrested in December 2010. Jyllands-Posten has been the intended target of several Islamic-inspired terror attacks since it published some rather innocent cartoons of Islam’s founder Mohammed in September 2005.

This particular plot to “kill as many people as possible” was uncovered and prevented through competent work by the security intelligence agency PET in Denmark together with its Swedish counterpart Säpo. However, there will probably be more such Islamic terror attempts in the future, and it is questionable whether the security services will be able to prevent all of them.

The business daily Finansavisen in Norway has concluded that immigration to Norway cost 210 billion Norwegian kroner under PM Jens Stoltenberg’s left-wing coalition government, between 2005 and 2013. This estimate may well be too low. In a series of carefully researched articles published in 2013, Finansavisen came to the conclusion that the non-Western immigrants who came to Norway in 2012 alone will cost the country 63 billion kroner, when all is said and done. On average, every single non-Western immigrant will cost native tax payers 4.1 million Norwegian kroner, with Somalis topping the list as the most costly nationality.

The only immigrants that were a net gain to the economy came from other Western countries, especially Western Europe and North America. Norway has for instance seen an influx of young Swedish nurses. These are culturally speaking closely-related peoples. It is far more difficult to assimilate Pakistanis, Kurds or Arabs.

The claim that non-Western immigration is beneficial to the economy is just plain wrong. Some big companies may gain short-term benefits from access to cheap labor, and left-wing political parties can import voters from Third World countries, who overwhelmingly tend to vote for left-wing parties. Yet for society as a whole in the long term, non-Western immigration is a net drain, not a net gain. Muslim immigration is a particular liability because it brings with it a whole set of additional problems not usually seen among Chinese or Thai immigrants.

These highly revealing numbers about the huge costs of mass immigration were barely talked about during the national election campaign in Norway in 2013. They were largely met with silence, usually by the very same journalists who claim that is no bias or censorship on subjects related to immigration. The reporters for the state broadcaster NRK were among the worst.

The costs are presumably higher in Sweden than in Norway since Sweden has accepted more non-Western immigrants that any other Nordic country. Moreover, unlike Norway, Sweden does not have substantial wealth derived from oil and natural gas. The large and growing costs related to mass immigration have already become a significant burden on society. The famous Swedish welfare state is no longer what it once was.

A study from 2014 revealed that eight of ten Swedes now believe they won’t get a pension that will cover their living expenses after retiring. At the same time, numbers from early 2014 indicated that Sweden is in the middle of its largest population increase in generations. Most of this is due to immigration from countries such as Somalia and Syria.

Native Swedes are running out of money, partly because this have to fund their own colonization. They will be a minority in their own country in a few decades, if present trends continue, and they are paying lots of money to finance this population replacement. The same could be said about other European countries, from The Netherlands or Germany to Britain.

The costs of mass immigration take different forms, direct and indirect. Those that are simplest to measure in monetary terms are social benefits and welfare payments. These have been demonstrated time and again in different studies from different Western countries to be very substantial.

A decline in social trust is another effect. This is harder to measure, but likely to be significant. The Scandinavian and Nordic countries owe parts of their wealth to high levels of social capital, for instance high levels of trust and low levels of corruption. This is a cultural achievement supported by a largely homogeneous populace with shared values. This great reservoir of social capital is now being willfully and systematically squandered by current immigration policies. By rendering the population less homogeneous and mass importing people from more cynical and repressive clannish cultures, you lower levels of trust and increase corruption.

Another type of cost is the rise of organized and violent crime. Many people now feel less safe in the streets, which is a serious negative consequence of open borders policies.

Last, but not least, comes the highest price of all: The loss of homeland. While spending billions needlessly on social benefits for foreigners may be annoying, you cannot put a price tag on being displaced in your own country by other nations and seeing your cultural heritage being disparaged and dismantled.

These negative effects are now being felt by the natives from Greece to Ireland and from Finland to France.

Former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower made a famous speech in 1961 where he warned against the military-industrial complex. If you put together all those who are today engaged in feeding, sheltering and settling asylum seekers and other newcomers, we are dealing with a sizable industry of people, from interpreters to lawyers. Perhaps we can call this the asylum-industrial complex or the immigration-industrial complex. Huge resources are spent on keeping up an ideology and an immigration policy that could ultimately render the native population a minority in their own country. This is currently taking place not just in one country, but in dozens of countries across an entire continent: Europe.

It will be left to future historians to determine how such a massive and dangerous social experiment on hundreds of millions of people could be presented as something good and inevitable, and how the gradual destruction of the most creative civilization in human history could be lauded as a positive achievement.

© 2014 Fjordman & Gates of Vienna

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33 thoughts on “Sweden and the Cost of Mass Immigration

  1. Immigration costs Swedes a lot and won’t have pension! That’s ok. They are humanists, altruists, they give give their food, money, and girls to muslims to appease them. They told Israelis and Serbians to agree to whatever the muslims demand, and then their won’t be conflicts. You see I always thought that Scandinavians were stupid. But no they are not. If you avoid a conflict at any cost you are humanist and a person with bleeding heart. In 30 years they will leave their countries to Somalis and urge Europe to follow suit and not be cruel.

    • Correct. Start complaining Swedes or shut up, kneel down, and wait for your throat to be cut.

  2. Sweden is the land of the shmoos – or, more correctly, the shmoon. They lay down their lives so that poor victimized immigrants might flourish…eh, make that “they lay down the lives of ordinary Swedes for immigrants”. The political class who managed this great abnegation don’t plan on giving up anything themselves.

  3. Islam. The gift that keeps on giving. And I mean “gift” in the German meaning.

    • “And I mean “gift” in the German meaning.”

      You could mean “gift” also in the Swedish meaning.

      The Swedish noun “ett gift” translates into English as “a poison”. The English word “gift” is “en gåva” in Swedish. The adjective “gift” means “married” 🙂

      I am so sorry the Swedes are ruining their country.

  4. What can one say? Utterly, completely, totally….murderously insane. What is wrong with people these days that just accept this disgusting, disgraceful deliberate destruction of their lives, nations and cultures. Jesus Christ! I inhabit a madhouse!

  5. shmoon = ugly; gift : German = poison.
    There are other names that Somalis use to describe the indigenous people that Dymphna and Baron won’t allow to be used here to keep this site clean. Cleanliness of heart and discipline are wonderful tenors of mind and discernment are tools of survival that Judaism and Christianity tried to cultivate in human psyche to lift humans to a higher level of thinking.
    Fifty years ago we thought that Third World countries would advance and progress and emulate the Europeans and even Scandinavian countries, because we put Scandinavian countries before the others in modernity.
    What a mistake! They thought they progressed to a low level Reductio ad absurdum. Who would have thought that after 1970s Europeans and Scandinavians recede and retreat to below the level of Third World Countries. That’s why they import them. Alike things attract each other.
    And who would have thought that Americans would become so lost and silly and confused and without will to the point where Muslims would find such audacity as to commemorate their first victory over USA by building Zero Ground Mosque, and they find supporters among American officials to facilitate that goal. Muslims consider The Raid on Manhattan equivalent to the Battle Of Badr by Allah’s general Muhammed.
    Every American should read : an explanatory memorandum muslim brotherhood
    document to see what kind of serpent, worse than the Adam and Eve’s is awaiting Americans in the future, and indeed the world. You’d better believe in Armageddon. I see the heat sprouting: … and nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom … “

    • I think Dymphna was referring to the Shmoos, which were characters from the old comic strip “Li’l Abner.” Just google “Li’l Abner meets the shmoo.” That should give you a lead on what they were.

  6. The false belief in equality not only between the sexes but between races as well as all the other self-destructive ideologies of leftism is what brought this about.

    The eradication of patriarchy through feminism leading to the weakening of the natives and the decline in birthrates and the destruction of a people through multiculturalism and this is the result.

    • Let me get this straight, jay. You decry the eradication of patriarchy, but are, presumably, also against islamisation.

      I really don’t need to comment further.

      • That says a lot about you Mark. Healthy relations between the sexes have indeed been destroyed by feminism, low birth rates and the decline of the institute of marriage as a result. This terrible European male patriarchy never actually existed.

        • Women in Western societies were not treated equally until very recently; please don’t try to rewrite history.

          One British example: until around the early 1950s, some women who had children outside marriage were certified insane, but never the fathers. Another: domestic violence, which is mainly perpetrated by men against women, is still not always treated seriously by the authorities.

          The feminist pendulum has indeed swung too far to the left, as it were, but bits of it still haven’t left their previous, and long standing, position.

          • When is domestic violence by women against men EVER taken seriously. When do men ever get custody of the children in divorce?

      • Equating Western treatment of women to Islamic treatment of women?

        I don’t really need to comment further.

  7. Dymphna extolled the virtues of Fred Siegel’s The Revolt Against the Masses in a comment on an earlier GoV article. It is indeed excellent and reveals to what extent liberals loathed Anglo-Saxon, bourgeois values.

    Mencken, for example, spoke of the “locals” of the Scopes trial as Babbits, morons, peasants, and yokels. (p. 55.) To Van Wyck Brooks the common man was a “simple moron” who needed the leadership of artists and writers. America was a “primeval monster” unaware of its own body “encrusted with parasites and half-indistinguishable from the slime in which it moves. (p. 44.) Randolph Bourne thought that America was “sordid and shabby” and had “frowsy towns.” (p. 19.)

    Edmund Wilson, who had himself served as a stretcher bearer in WWI, “took pride in the belief that his generation of critics and writers had launched an unprecedente4d and continuous attack on their own culture. . . . Speaking of the war, . . . [he] hissed: “I should be insincere to make it appear that the d3eaths of this ‘poor white trash’ of the South and the rest made me feel half so bitter as the mere conscription of enlistment of any of my friends.” (p. 44)

    From there liberals swooned into the arms of socialism and communism and reveled in the supposed deliverance into Utopia promised by the New Deal. The beautiful people would come into their own as the rightful controllers of “the herd” as would befit their higher intelligence, superior education, and consummate grasp of social theory. The dreariness and tawdriness of the American schlubery with their greasy getting and spending in the capitalist hamster cage and pathetic reverence for their “Constitution” would finally take a back seat to the samurai poets (Siegel) and artists who would lead the way to The Future.

    The contempt of the liberals of the early 20th century is shocking. I don’t know enough to connect that time to the present time in the West, but I’m willing to posit that the way elites are jamming immigration down the throats of Western populations is firmly rooted in that same contempt and inflated sense of importance. Modern Western elites despise the morons and scum that they see as comprising the bulk of their populations. The rest just follows as the night the day. Come to understand the hostility and sense of entitlement of the elites and you at least know why this started and why it’s being pushed so hard.

  8. You write: “The Scandinavian and Nordic countries owe parts of their wealth to high levels of social capital, for instance high levels of trust and low levels of corruption. This is a cultural achievement supported by a largely homogeneous populace with shared values. ”
    Let us not forget that this achievement is largely due to the traditional religion of Sweden – Christianity in the form of Lutheranism. The Lutheran Church used to emphasise the value of honest hard work, financial probity and a frugal lifestyle. Nowadays, the Lutheran Church in Sweden is a shambles, its leaders reject the basic Christian teachings. They even consider that Islam is no worse than Christianity.

    Swedish bishops no longer worship God, they worship social justice, multiculturalism, tolerance and all the idols of modern materialistic society. Being misguided herself, what sort of spiritual guidance can this church provide?

    So, this decline in social trust and morality as a whole is not due only to the nefarious influence of Muslim and other third-world immigrants. It is first of all the result of Sweden’s deChristianisation. Which, by the way, is responsible for this policy of militant multiculturalism

  9. I must say that I’m quite happy about what’s happening in Sweden. Seriously. And I hope they open their doors even more.

    Why? Because Europe is not gonna wake up until they see one european country completely destroyed. It’s not difficult to guess which is gonna be the first one: Sweden (or France, one of them, or both). The quicker, the better, so the rest of Europe can wake up and react. England is starting to wake up. France, not yet, but not far from it. Germany… well, perhaps. Sweden is the only one that continues speeding up towards the abism. So, please, Sweden, speed up, so the rest of Europe can fully see what’s coming.

  10. Sweden. What strange psychopathology causes such self-destructive behaviour? Tyranny. Promiscuity dressed up as charity. The Westerner’s mind grows more perverse. This can’t end happily for the Swedes. This can’t end happily for any of us. Betrayed by our elders. Betrayed by the elite. No reverence for our own. No love for our own. Perverse.

    • This strange psychopathology is called deChristianisation. Christianity is the foundation of the whole edifice of European civilisation. Large parts of this foundation have been removed and the whole edifice is shaking. Soon it will fall apart like a house of cards.

      • All this use of passive voice is revealing. Who deChristianized Western Christian culture? If it wasn’t Christians, who was it?

        Then again, there are those who argue that our deChristianized Western culture is actually just hyperChristianized culture – where a critical mass positive-intentioned excess of Christian virtue is responsible for our current immigration predicament – as if Christians are completely controlling the show.

        You know, Christians being too Christian for their own good.

        So, is it an inner enemy or an outer enemy that is rapidly and completely deChristianizing Western Christian culture?

    • “What strange psychopathology causes such self-destructive behaviour? ”

      We might consider a Darwinian explanation.

      Some studies in evolutionary biology show that a trait which has increased in a population due to high adaptability to the environment, tends to deteriorate over time once the evolutionary pressure is removed.

      Thus, you have the phenomenon of eyeless fish in totally dark caves. The eyes are not beneficial to the fish. Genetic variations that leave the fish without eyes compete on an equal basis with the genes for eyes, and over time, the eye genes become overwhelmed.

      In the same vein, courage, determination, and strength of will were survival factors when the European powers were fighting wars with each other. Similarly, the individual trait of strength, courage, and will power were necessary for the individual to survive in an environment of constant fighting. Not incidentally, under capitalism, individual initiative and willingness to literally fight for your interest was a survival factor.

      After a hundred and fifty years of socialism and wars that emphasize mass killing rather than individual engagements, the traits of strength and self-reliance of Europeans has just been overwhelmed by random personality traits. The European bureaucracy rides to power on their willingness to go along and their skills at bureaucratic in-fighting. Why would we expect leaders to show courage, when courage has been systematically selected out of the promotion process?

      In a nutshell, attribute the decline in European civilization to the process that gives the resources of genetically productive individual to support and care for individuals incapable of either productive behavior or independent actions. The genetic advantage, of course, goes to those individuals who receive adequate resources to produce progeny, but who spend their time in procreation rather than production.

  11. Fjordman wrote about asylum-industrial complex.

    I would rather talk about Human Rights industrial complex, because it also includes the elements of the legal system and anti-Racism industry that would not exist if there were no asylum seekers from the Third World.

  12. Hear, hear. The severe problems that they have can only be hidden by severe restrictions on free speech. Thus the phenomenon of Swedish Antifascistisk Action (AFA) thuggery that the police can’t seem to detect, prevent or prosecute. The lies that must be told to justify the Swedish insanity multiply every day and the truth has to be met by violence or personal destruction. As the overburden of lies accumulates, the savagery of the attacks on critics must and does increase proportionally.

    I used to entertain myself by studying Obama’s document fraud and communist connections, as well as the GOP obsession over mass immigration to undercut American workers. Now the thing to watch is the Swedish implosion. It’s like watching a bridge collapse itself after a critical support structure has been weakened by a demolition charge.

    Sweden’s eventual gift to civilization will be to demonstrate the foolishness of hating your own culture and the values that made European culture so magnificent.

  13. The Swedes have lost the inner representation of the “nation” as something that exists, is precious, and must be preserved for ever. Destroying that inner representation is itself a form of decapitalization that throws off innumerable benefits in terms of undeferred gratification, all of which can be monetized.

    The same is happening in every Western country, though the cultural revolution that long ago put economic being over community and cultural being is doubtless more to blame than immigration. Excess immigration is a symptom, not the disease, just as Islamic colonization is a symptom. If we were strong patriotic traditionalists instead of liberals to the core, these things wouldn’t happen.

    Fjordman probably doesn’t realize how far back these pathologies go in America. We have been deluged with immigrants since the early 19th century, and moving west, rather than assimilating them, has kept our level of social solidarity low. We have a large degree of solidarity among the minority who want minimal government and local self-determination, but that is abstract compared to standing shoulder to shoulder against invaders.

    I hope all European countries, including America, wake up, shut their borders, and start expelling undesirables, but the disease of denationalization is so widespread I don’t see it happening. Rather, economies will have to crash and be re-built on a new basis of participants vs. outsiders. Those communities will be the basis of new nations, which may even call themselves by the old names.

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