An Update on Sweden’s Remigration Experiment—More Work to Be Done

Over the course of the November a series of articles came out in European media that numerous municipalities in Sweden refused to cooperate with the Swedish government is it prepares to implement its remigration policies. To be more specific: refusing to implement White Papers recommendations on remigration policy.

At the start of November 75 of the nation’s 290 municipalities had refused to cooperate with the government and by November 11^th 130 of the 290 municipalities had rebuffed offers to work with the national coordinator for the voluntary return of migrants. The leftists, liberals, and conservative wet blankets are upset about the remigration programs, and this is great, but they are upset about a program that is falling short.

For anyone who is out in the fog on this: In mid-2024 the Swedish government announced that it would be implementing a policy of ‘voluntary return’ of immigrants to the country through the use of payment incentives. Sweden, long labeled the “canary in the coal mine” of the failing multicultural experiment in the West has also been the first nation to radically reverse its position on migration. In the initial report authored by a government commission it was recommended the Swedish state offer migrants a $15,000 payment to return to their countries of origin, but White Papers argued this was not enough. The average asylum seeker in Sweden was earning $4,000 more than this potential $15k payment each year in Sweden.

For this reason and others White Papers gave a list of recommendations to the Swedish government. They needed to at least double the payment to $30,000, they needed a media campaign to promote the remigration initiative, and they needed to work with local governments and race/faith based organizations of these migrants to promote return.

The Swedish state adopted all of these recommendations. Today the remigration payment stands at about $37,000 and the government is coordinating a media blitz to promote it while, as aforementioned, getting (or not getting) buy-in from local governments.

Mayors and municipal governments in the country’s largest cities of Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö have rejected the offer but so have small villages and medium sized towns such as Jokkmokk, Boden, Kiruna, Gällivare, Överkalix, Pajala, Arvidsjaur, Arjeplog, Luleå, and Växjö. It has been litany of rejections from entrenched local governments who rely upon a more localized leftist movement for votes than the liberal-nationalist coalition governing the country. There is also self-interest element. According to the Le Monde piece linked above 22% of municipal employees are immigrants to the country and, of course, no bureaucracy is going to voluntarily shrink itself.

Still, Sweden is not the United States with a complex constitutional structure of overlapping sovereigns who jostle for authority. Sweden is a unitary kingdom and the national government can force municipalities to act through the passage of legislation in the Riksdag (parliament). The same government that is ushering through passage of the remigration legislation is still in power in Sweden and it not only should but must include provisions to compel the cooperation of municipalities in the remigration process. The advocates of mass immigration and multiculturalism gave Swedes no choice in the acceptance of millions of foreigners and now it is the turn of patriotic Swedes to give the leftists and liberals no choice but to send these foreigners packing.

Yet, my main criticism is not reserved for the ridiculous local mayors and councils of Sweden who refuse to cooperate with a policy to save the nation. My main critique is with the Swedish government and its publication on October 31, 2025 detailing who will be eligible for the ‘repatriation grants’ and how much they will be eligible to receive.

The most glaring problem is that Swedish citizens cannot receive the repatriation grant.

This precludes a significant majority of the immigrants to Sweden. Of the 2.2 million persons of foreign birth in the country about 65.5%, or 1.45 million people, have acquired Swedish citizenship. The Swedish government has attempted to explain this massive hole in its remigration policy by stating that it would be unconstitutional to simply revoke citizenship, and it would indeed be illegal if the government revoked citizenship unilaterally, but that is not what is on offer here. The “repatriation grant” is taken up voluntarily and the Swedish government should, in fact must, legislate that citizens of a non-Swedish background can take the remigration payment and as a condition of doing so voluntarily relinquish their Swedish citizenship, a process that already exists in Swedish law.

The next problem are the caps on the amount of money a migrant family can receive for remigrating. The Swedish government has a cap of 350,000 SEK for a single adult, 500,000 SEK for a married couple, and 600,000 SEK for a married couple with children. Single parents can apply for a grant of 25,000 SEK per child. These caps should be increased if the Swedish government wants more buy-in from the very large migrant, specifically Muslim, families that have taken up residence in the country and leech off the Swedish welfare state. A better system would be the 350,000 SEK per adult, 700,000 SEK for a couple, and up to one million SEK for married families with children (about $106,000).

Which leads me onto the budget for all of this. The Swedish government has budgeted just under 5 billion SEK between 2025 and 2027 for voluntary returns, a figure that would enable the departure of just 14,285 people. Once again this is woefully insufficient. If the Swedish state is doing a media blitz to promote remigration, which it is, and if the Swedish state is getting buy-in from local governments and organizations, which it is, it is going to find itself massively under prepared and underfunded when the torrent of poor welfare dependent migrants come after the veritable bounty of a remigration payment that could sustain them for decades in their home countries.

The Swedish government is doubtless on the right track but if they are to succeed to preserving a Sweden for the native Swedes they will need to open the process up to naturalized citizens and the descendants of immigrants, make the grants as generous as possible, and force local governments to cooperate in the process.

Now is not the time for half measures, now is the time to save a nation.