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Thanks for the ping, rmlew, and sorry about your grandmother.

Professional and Western Culture, when did Sweden's policy on immigration change?

When I was in Sweden 35 years ago, the only "immigrants" there were Finns! (And needless to say, Finns are much more easy to assimilate than Middle Eastern Muslims.)

Not only was immigration to Sweden very difficult in the 1970s, iirc, but there were also obstacles to staying in the country legally to work. Foreigners who wished to work in Sweden had to arrange for a job from outside of the country, then apply for a work permit.

I could be wrong, but I believe we were required to take classes in Swedish if we wanted a work permit, too.

I was born in 67, came to the US in 68. But, I used to spend virtually every summer there with Grandparents. The immigrants started to show up in the late 70s. If I remember correctly, it was first a humanitarian thing from S America. El Salvador, Chile, Peru, Nicaragua, etc. The govt of Sweden, since th 70s has been very dominated by the Socialist Democrats, essentially the Democrats of the US. Whether they were just bleeding hearts, or looking for a future lock on voting I don’t know. What I do know is, that every time the world had some hot spots, they brougth folks from there. Palestine, Bosnia, M/E, Latin American, Turkey, Poland, whatever.

Before you could realize that you were being boiled in the pot, the country of 6 million or so, had been turned into a country just full of immigrants.

Many of these people came to the country, and when they realized that EVERYTHING was free, it just shot their work ethic. I mean, they were given a place to live, food, health care, education, for completely free, with nothing expected of them. Then the word got out to their relatives living back in the crap hole country, they came too....

I must emphasize, this was not just Sweden, but most of bleeding heart liberal left wing W Europe.