Emigrating to Sweden could become less attractive

The Sweden Democrats party secretary has proposed that migrants should be offered money to leave the country and said that it was time for minority groups to do more to look after “true Swedes”.

Bjorn Soder said he would not be against migrants being offered a cash incentive to return to their homelands, noting that it would make the decision easier for them. He claimed that such “repatriation grants” would leave Sweden in a better position to develop a “society of common identity”.

Soder, who was speaking with Dagens Nyheter, claimed that many Jews, Sami and Kurd people may boast Swedish citizenship but were not true Swedes because they didn’t integrate fully into society. He claimed that society in the country allowed everybody who wanted to fit in to do so, but that it was up to the individual to “adapt and assimilate” in the correct way.

The party secretary went on to say that, in his view, the majority of people of Jewish origin who have Swedish citizenship had left their Jewish identity behind, but noted that if they didn’t do that it didn’t have to be an issue.

However, his comments have been strongly condemned by the Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism chairman Willy Siberstein, who pointed out that he was born in Sweden and was Jewish, and was every bit as much a Swede as Bjorn Soder. He claimed the “us and them” mentality was a characteristic of the Sweden Democrats party, who he said derived from Nazi organisations.