A few years ago, on a flight from Amsterdam to Dubai, I was startled when a passenger several rows behind me began throwing a screaming fit. He was a thin African man, shouting epithets in a language I could not understand, and he had to be physically restrained and bound by the crew and people who were escorting him. After the noise subsided, I asked one of the crew what had happened. I was told he was a Somali being deported to his home country. He needed to be physically escorted all the way to Mogadishu against his will, since he would not go voluntarily. I wondered then, and have wondered many times since, if deporting one unwilling, potentially violent illegal immigrant to a country such as Somalia was so much trouble, what would be necessary to deport thousands such?
It would appear that Sweden is about to find out. After being flooded with more than 160,000 refugees last year — an unprecedented number for the small Scandinavian nation — Sweden is already estimating that at least 80,000 asylum seekers’ applications will be rejected. Then Sweden will have to figure out how to make them leave.
Whether or not Sweden can solve this problem will speak volumes about the risks of having open borders. According to Swedish Interior Minister Andres Ygeman, the mass deportations can be carried out, over several years, using specially chartered jets. It is hard to see any alternative (except perhaps using oceangoing vessels), but the logistics will be formidable. For one thing, where will they be flown to? There are no international airports or drop-off venues in Syria suited to the repatriation of refugees. Iraq is increasingly unstable outside of Baghdad. And the Taliban are rapidly reconquering Afghanistan. So where to put them is not an easy dilemma to solve.
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Moreover, as my experience with the Somali on the plane illustrated, many refugees will physically resist rather than be deported willingly. Sweden may have to physically restrain deportees on flights, and reserve plenty of seats for security personnel to put down the inevitable in-flight rebellions.
The urgency of dealing with Sweden’s immigration crisis has been highlighted by the stabbing death of Alexandra Mezher (herself of Middle Eastern origin) at a center for unaccompanied teenage boy refugees near Gothenburg. The boy attacked and stabbed Mezher without any clear motive, although it has been suggested that overcrowding and other pressures at such refugee centers often contribute to such attacks.
The Swedish public is growing increasingly alarmed in the face of such attacks and rising crime perpetrated by recent immigrants and refugees all across the country. Historically low-key and welcoming to immigrants, Sweden’s 9.8 million people are stretched to the breaking point trying to provide for an influx of immigrants that is one of the largest in proportion to total population anywhere in Europe. The Sweden Democrats, a right-wing political party, has seen its popularity surge in recent months, thanks mostly to the Swedish government’s steadfast refusal — until now — to acknowledge the severity of the immigration problem. For refugees flooding into Europe from the Middle East, Sweden is regarded as the most desirable destination other than Germany. Sweden has recently instituted better border controls (ID checkpoints, in particular) that have reduced the immigration rate to more manageable levels, but that’s cold comfort for those trying to come to grips with the throngs of refugees already there.
Other European nations, of course, are starting to come to grips with similar problems, with the ongoing wave of refugees putting intolerable strains on already creaky government services, and unrest and criminal activity angering the local populaces.
How and whether Sweden is able to put its plans into effect remains to be seen. But one inescapable lesson that Sweden — and the rest of Europe — is about to learn is that it is far easier to keep immigration under control in the first place than to do damage control after being overrun by a desperate and culturally disparate wave of immigrants, many of whom are willing to resort to crime and violence (and perhaps, in a few cases, even terrorism) rather than take orders from a host government in a country for whose culture and religion they have no respect.
