Posted on 09/23/2014 7:58:57 AM PDT by Eurotwit
THE narrow victory of the left-leaning Social Democratic Party in Sweden’s elections last Sunday marked a broad shift in its politics. But a new coalition government is unlikely to reconsider one of the country’s most challenging policies: its response to the Syrian civil war. Sweden has taken an open-door approach to people fleeing the conflict, accepting more Syrians than any other European country.
Never mind that Sweden has double-digit youth unemployment. That there have been riots in immigrant neighborhoods in Stockholm...Or that the Swedish Migration Board, which handles asylum seekers, needs a drastic budget increase — almost $7 billion — to cover soaring costs over the next few years.
------------ A far wealthier social democracy than Sweden, Norway spends a greater share of gross domestic product on humanitarian assistance than any other country in the world. It also has the lowest unemployment in Europe ...
Yet Norway is not encouraging asylum-seekers. When I recently asked one of the very few Syrians I met in Oslo why he had chosen Norway, he said, “I thought Oslo was in Sweden.” And while the Norwegian government has agreed to resettle 1,000 United Nations-selected Syrian refugees, this summer it rejected 123 of them because of medical conditions deemed too serious for local health services to manage.
This has put Sweden and Norway on opposite sides of an emerging debate: whether advanced welfare states designed for small and homogeneous societies in the mid-20th century are capable of absorbing large numbers of non-European foreigners.
In Sweden, a closely patrolled pro-immigration “consensus” has sustained extraordinarily liberal policies while placing a virtual taboo on questions about the social and economic costs. In Norway, a strong tradition of free speech and efficient administration has produced a hard-nosed approach about which refugees, and how many, to take in.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Wonder if this article in the NY Times makes Reinfeldt choke on his morning coffee :P
What are Swedes? Norwegians with their brains knocked out.
(Old family joke - Grandma was from Sweden, Grandpa was from Norway)
Pretty sure testosterone is banned in Sweden
Welcoming millions of muslims. Yeah. Great idea.
Swedishness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8_7yPocGPg
Unfortunately this suicidal nation may drag down its neighbors with it.
From the New York Times mind you, not presently known for being a bastion of neutrality in the consensus v. Reality conflict, perhaps unwittingly striking out at a possible cause for Sweden's cultural death wish.
I don't know what my thoughts are about a publication that also (unwittingly?) illustrates the manufacturing of a taboo and how this directly conflicts with the natural right of free speech.
Sven and Ole will be sorry...
We have that lousy Ted The Red Kennedy to thank for being inundated with non-Northern European immigrants. He sponsored the bill to take LBJ’s lead in importing vast numbers of dependents so that the Democrats will never run out of voters.
Yes, they wanted the “die-versify” for voter rolls and other aspects of their agenda, but I am wondering if at least for a few of the lower tier of the leftist elite, the “die-versity” is starting to get a little too close to home (jobs, knockout game,etc) for comfort. I hope they all choke on what they have inflicted on the rest of us.
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