What Sweden’s Attempt to Course-Correct on Migration Shows the West

O n June 15, the Swedish Riksdag formally approved legislation introducing “good conduct” requirements for immigrants, allowing visas to be retracted or denied to those who are guilty of “bad conduct” (bristande vandel in Swedish). Critics, including the United Nations, prominent NGOs, and much of international media, have derided the law; Amnesty International went so far as to call it a “race law” and compared it to South African apartheid. They could not be more wrong.

Since taking power in 2022, a right-wing coalition government, supported by the national conservative Sweden Democrats, has taken significant steps to close Sweden’s open borders. Asylum migration is down by more than half, while deportations and voluntary returns have skyrocketed. And Sweden’s strict approach to migration enforcement has shown concrete results: Before this year, Sweden hadn’t had a single month without deadly shootings since at least 2016 (when monthly records began). So far this year, the country has had two.

Given the size of Sweden’s troubles, however, more needs to be done — and fast. The unemployment rate among migrants remains stubbornly high. The number of alienated areas — sometimes misleadingly referred to by international media as “no-go zones” — has continued to rise, and the cultural self-segregation show no signs of yielding. Incentives are needed to convince migrants to choose assimilation.

This brings us to the recent legislation. What exactly counts as “bad conduct”? Patterns of non-compliance with laws, regulations, or the authorities (bristande regelefterlevnad) are a core example. Felonies have always been grounds for deportation, but with this change, even a pattern of non-felony offenses can be enough. Crimes cited as examples include petty levels of tax evasion and undeclared work, as well as abuse of Sweden’s generous state welfare apparatus. In Swedish law, such offenses are not (usually) felonies, yet they are clear indicators of poor character.

Second, unwillingness or failure to settle debts is now also considered bad conduct. Unlike the United States, Sweden has a National Enforcement Agency that acts as the collector of last resort for unpaid debts; the organization has the power to confiscate property and garnish wages. Migrants whose debts are passed to the Enforcement Agency, and especially those who owe taxes or have unpaid fines, now risk deportation. This particularly goes for those who display an unwillingness (as opposed to a mere inability) to pay and who refuse to cooperate with the Agency.

A third example of bad conduct under the new legislation is close association with criminal groups. Organized crime has plagued Sweden in recent years. Under the new legislation, association with criminal networks or violent organizations can be grounds for deportation, even if the person has not been convicted of any particular crime. Leaders of networks involved in organized panhandling or the exploitation of vulnerable people may also be targeted.

Finally — and most controversially — lifestyle and values can fall into the bad conduct category. This covers supporters of radical Islam and extremist groups, including Hamas. Scrutiny of lifestyle and values was a relatively late addition to the law; the move was inspired by open street celebrations in cities like Malmö on October 8, 2023, in which 200 cars participated in a demonstration celebrating the previous day’s Hamas attacks.

Spreading demonstrably false and hostile claims about Swedish institutions (such as conspiracy theories accusing social services of systematically taking Muslim children from their parents and placing them with Christian families to convert them to Christianity) can also factor into deportation decisions if the claims amount to criminal conduct or show clear unwillingness to respect Swedish society. Opponents argue that this section is vague and will violate both freedom of speech and equality before the law. But the critique ignores that residency in a country is not a right for non-citizens — it’s a privilege that can be revoked at any time, for a reason that citizens’ elected representatives determine. Deficient conduct under the law — such as support for terrorist groups like Hamas — will not carry any fine or prison sentence; such behavior will merely result in the privilege of residence being revoked.

Overall, and as emphasized repeatedly by the government, the law allows for a holistic assessment of non-citizens’ residential status in Sweden: A single instance of “deficient conduct” may not necessarily result in deportation, but the law rightly allows for anti-social conduct to factor into decisions of who gets to stay.

It is of course true that the law is somewhat vague. In theory, such vagueness could invite abuse by authorities. Yet context is necessary here. Sweden’s problem has never been that migrants are overpoliced. Quite the opposite: The Swedish Migration Agency has time and time again actively undermined government policy, most recently just last month when Agency managers ordered employees to work overtime for several weeks to hand out as many Swedish passports as possible before new, stricter citizenship rules came into force.

A new law, passed together with the conduct law, requires prosecutors to request deportation when prosecuting migrants for felonies. Up until now, activist prosecutors have been able to keep even migrants guilty of crimes such as rape and murder in the country by not formally requesting deportation as part of their sentence. Such egregious recent patterns of behavior demonstrate how Sweden struggles with an administrative state that is fundamentally pro-migration — arguably more so than any other country’s.

Yet there are still good forces and good people within these agencies who are trying to do their jobs. Laws like the conduct law allow civil servants to deny or revoke visas of migrants whom they know to be a poor fit for Sweden’s society, even if they have not (yet) committed any felonies. Just as migrants may contribute to a country in several ways, there are also several ways through which migrants can pose a burden on a country — crime is just one way, and the conduct law targets many of the others. This is true not just for Sweden, but for other countries as well — which is why other countries should follow Sweden’s lead and add technically non-criminal but anti-social behavior as a cause for deportation.

Far from a “race law,” this law judges people not for the color of their skin but for the content of their character. Laws like Sweden’s conduct law will both deter prospective migrants of poor character from coming and act as an incentive for those already here to stay on the narrow path. It is long past time for other nations to follow suit and treat residency as the privilege it has always been.