Part 1

Sweden calls on army to help manage refugee crisis
Military chiefs to aid migration agencies as Scandinavian country that has taken far beyond its share of migrants strains from sheer weight of numbers

Swedish officials say the system is overwhelmed by the numbers of people arriving.

Patrick Kingsley in Stockholm
Tuesday 10 November 2015


Sweden’s army is to help manage the fallout from the country’s refugee crisis, with the civilian administration struggling to cope with an unprecedented surge in arrivals and a top official claiming there is no room left, in the short-term, for migrants reaching Swedish shores.

On Monday, military officers were sent to help coordinate logistics at Migrationsverket, Sweden’s refugee and immigration agency. They will be involved at a management level, rather than on the ground.

Winter is coming: the new crisis for refugees in Europe
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For several weeks, Migrationsverket has already been working with the country’s civil contingencies agency (MSB), a department usually involved in the aftermath of natural disasters or in overseas humanitarian catastrophes. The severely short-staffed migration agency cannot find enough housing for refugees, some of whom have been forced to sleep on the floor of reception centres. Despite some centres quadrupling their manpower in recent months, many agency officials are working double-shifts and weekends.

“We don’t have any more space,” the agency’s lead spokesman, Fredrik Bengtsson, said. State-owned accommodation has been full since 2012, he said, and now officials cannot find any more affordable private housing. “For the time being, all of these are finished as well, so for the last three or four nights we’ve had people sleeping in our [non-residential] centres across the country. Right now we’re just looking for people to have a roof over their heads.”

Sweden is bearing a disproportional burden of the European refugee crisis, due in part to its pledge in 2013 to provide permanent residency to almost any Syrian who reached Swedish soil. Of the roughly 800,000 people to have arrived in Europe by sea this year, at least one in seven have ended up in Sweden, even though the country accounts for just one in 50 EU citizens. So far in 2015, more than 120,000 people have applied for asylum in Sweden.

Migrationsverket expects the total number of refugees to reach about 170,000 by the end of the year, with 10,000 people arriving every week, compared with 4,000 during the summer. A few years ago, case workers hoped to reach a decision on every asylum application within two or three months; now some speculate each one might take two years.

For those familiar with other parts of the European migration trail, the scenes in Sweden will seem contained and organised compared with the chaos in places such as the Greek island of Lesbos, where refugees are left to walk and even sometimes sleep in the rain, with little institutional support. But in Sweden, even experienced asylum officials are nevertheless shocked by the unprecedented scale of the challenge that faces them, especially with winter fast approaching.

“I’ve never seen this many people, ever,” said Olof Grindemark, a team leader at Märsta, one of the two main reception centres in Stockholm, as he walked past the queues at the centre on Monday. “We don’t seem to have any more beds in Sweden. We don’t have anywhere to send them.”

In the medium-term, the situation is not so dire. The government has identified potential space in sports halls and other public buildings for an extra 66,000 arrivals, just under half of which could be converted without too many adjustments. But in the short term, ready-to-use space is proving hard to find due to a combination of allegedly greedy landlords, arsonists and health-and-safety laws. Vandals have set fire to several sites earmarked for refugees, while the agency blames legislative bureaucracy for the delay in opening a series of tent cities in southern Sweden.

This struggle to provide something as basic as accommodation has led to fears about Sweden’s ability to handle more complex refugee needs, such as education and healthcare. “How will they manage doctors and schools, and how will [refugees] learn Swedish?” asked Enar Bostedt, one of Sweden’s most experienced asylum lawyers. “That’s totally another issue that no one has had time to think about that yet"

For the time being, the migration agency is struggling even to register asylum seekers fast enough. In Solna, the second of Stockholm’s two big reception centres, staff numbers have risen from 30 to 130 in two years, but even this increase is not enough. The volume of applicants is still so great that the management usually has to turn less vulnerable people away, “sometimes by 10am or 11am”, said Joakim Selen, deputy head of the centre’s asylum seeking unit

Staff often work until 11pm, even at weekends, while experienced case workers have been asked to help out with the more basic role of migrant registration, leading to further delays in the decision-making process. In an ideal situation, case workers should judge three asylum applications a week, but this is now rarely possible. “We can’t get out three decisions a week,” said Emma Weinstock, a case worker. “The more cases you have, the more preparation work you have.”

Some refugees have lost patience with the backlog. “In Sweden the process is so slow, so I’m going back to Iraq,” said Hassanein, a 29-year-old technician, waiting at Stockholm central station, before his attempted homewards journey. “My family is waiting for me there, and it isn’t safe for them to wait there for so long without me.” Hassanein said he was scared to return, holding up a disfigured hand that he claims was the result of an attack by Islamic State. “But I’m just going back to gather my family, and bring them to Sweden again, so we can all wait here together.”

The Swedish government has been criticised for failing to accompany its 2013 promise to Syrians with appropriate measures to prepare for their arrival. In defence of their preparations, Bengtsson said the situation had been very manageable until mid-2015, when the sudden rush of arrivals through Turkey and Greece took all of Europe by surprise. The situation this autumn has been made more critical by a spike in the number of unaccompanied Afghan children, all of whom require an even greater level of care than adult asylum seekers.

But whatever the cause of the refugee crisis, it has undeniably caused a crisis of identity within Sweden itself. Some stoke the fear that Sweden risks being unable to provide for its own citizens if it continues to let in so many outsiders. The Swedish Democrats, a far-right party that has recently grown in popularity, distributed a flyer to refugees landing in Lesbos this week that claimed that thanks to immigration “our society is falling apart”, and warned migrants from trying to reach Sweden. Hours later, Sweden’s conservative party, known as the Moderates, called for increased border controls against refugees.

Part 2 of 2

Others feel that any dereliction of duties to refugees would mark an abandonment of the core tenets of Sweden’s social democracy. “Our society is built on the principle that people are entitled to the same as everyone else,” said the secretary-general of the Swedish bar association, Anne Ramberg, as she waited to provide legal advice to new refugee arrivals at Stockholm central station. “But we are in a situation where we can’t even give refugees housing.”

The answer, Ramberg argued, is not for Sweden to lower its standards, but for the rest of the world’s richest continent to take on its fair share. “A crisis for us,” said Ramberg, “is very different from the crisis in Jordan or Lebanon,” two countries where refugees are estimated to respectively constitute around a tenth and a quarter of the total population. “We could take these people if we had solidarity between EU countries. We are a continent of 500 million people – of course we could do it. But there’s no solidarity. It’s just Germany and Sweden ”

The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/10/sweden-calls-on-army-to-help-manage-refugee-crisis/

Sweden is Under Social Mind Control: http://youtu.be/XjgVlUHtS6E/ Extreme Liberalism Where You Can NOT Disagree Or Have An Opinion. (Sept 30,2015)

yep,The Fertilizer is really hitting the Ventilator!

The situation in Sweden is horrible. Its already effected the Swedish Bikini Teams next calendar shoot....

Welcome to Texas

NICE one, Reb...

NOT being able to disagree or talk about it or complain is REALLY out of hand....in many places in Europe. But it is still getting out, mostly from non citizens/ non residents in the country.
The YouTube videos & news clips from each country are unbelievably EVIL & disturbing. I don't know which is worst.. (for me to grasp)
The truth or the global goverments propaganda. ?

These are NOT families who were homeless!!! It is up to 75% MEN.
* Wake up people *

I seen enough for one day..

AND Arizona...AND NM, AND Colorado... Heck, the last time I was in downtown L.A., it seemed like there were more Hispanics than whites/Asians/blacks/etc.

Well the USA is 40% white. Been that way for awhile. That I don't really care or worry about.
BUT... NOT be a LEGAL citizen. & NOT assimilating I do care. And getting a free ride & expecting the USA to CHANGE ( culture, religion, laws, lifestyle) to micic the country you left or NEVER even had... Oh yea.. I care.

Is that before, after, or during their suicide bombing mission?

My area in Jersey now has a entire side of the town filled with Mexicans. Non ( or very, very few ) legal That part even now has its own name " Westside".. didn't before.

In my opinion, they should deport the ones who are here illegally.. period.

With the expectation of the 6 who work in kitchen of Naples Pizzaria..my local authentic Italian food restaurant... what can I say... they make a great sausage pie... I don't want to loose that.

When we get blonde blue eyed suicide bombers, I will keep an eye on them also. It only takes on out of hundreds of thousands to make a mess.

Winter, should thin out some of 'that' immigration "problem".

Fire up those furnaces?

Uhhhh... no.

Just let the hardships of a Scandinavian winter... take their toll.

why indeed... i'm sure someone else was thinking that same thing as the "one" pushed that detonator button and extinguished theirs and 75 other innocent patrons at a nightclub..

Sweden Natives Being Kicked Out Of Their Homes …: http://youtu.be/Yiyt8B9ycDE/ 2:54 sec. June 8, 2012

Swedish immigrant are talking about the rape of a…: http://youtu.be/3pcNtWpGB1c/ 3:21sec. November 8, 2014

Islamic Invasion Of Sweden Has Led To Rape Crisis: http://youtu.be/-uNBoUqGvVs/ 4:49sec.
December 7, 2014

Immigration Is Killing Sweden's Welfare State: http://youtu.be/UoUjJKXZjRY/ 2:34sec. December 11,2015

Ex Muslim in Sweden Koran Revealed a Religion I D…: http://youtu.be/Ja2RYJoawdA/ 5:46 sec. April 30, 2015

Somalis in Sweden evicted, demand free housing an…: http://youtu.be/2IDBxPLp3i0/ 3:31sec. June 3, 2014

Muslims say they will make it legal to rape white women when they the over Europe http://youtu.be/-QRZ-gcG4Es/3:39sec. August 3, 2014

Migrants Rioting in Sweden: http://youtu.be/1YqF9E4z1GU/ 2:32sec. September 15, 2015

PBS Report -Migrant-magnet Sweden strains to shelter unexpect…: http://youtu.be/zzrDuY-Ufxk/ 9:13sec. October 8, 2015

Still Report #442 - Sweden Could Collapse: Also addresses Obama & USA To Learn From Sweden http://youtu.be/7u5ZAW_9MNI/ 4:28. October 18, 2015

Migrant crisis: Is Sweden facing collapse?: http://youtu.be/0SAabdhe2iM/ 10:02 sec. Oct 30, 2015
-----------------------------------
Migrant Crisis and Invasion of Europe Exposed: http://youtu.be/hL-vFNzOA0c/ 5:23sec. September 8, 2015

Migrant Crisis: The Footage the Media Refuses to …:5:53sec. http://youtu.be/ZV315xqbRK8/ Sept, 11, 2015. What CNN & BBC Won't Show You

SAVAGE REFUGEES: RIOTING IN CHURCHES, THIEVING, & DEFECATING IN PUBLIC & PRIVATE PROPERTY http://youtu.be/zZIuV1F6SQ8/
October 10, 2015

Why not send them to New Zealand? Then other countries will understand the impact

Wish we could, then maybe you would think different. New Zealand isn't even the size of Houston, which is just a city un a big state among many states to make this country