Sweden is offering migrants $34,000 to leave the country.
In saying “we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our migration policy,” Migration Minister Johan Forssell said Sweden would increase its offer almost 35 times to entice migrants to go home beginning in 2026, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The current Swedish government program to entice migrants to leave — $976 per adult, $488 per child, a cap of $3,903 per family — is little used and was taken up by only one migrant in 2023, Forssell said.
The conservative Sweden Democrats, who finished second in the county’s most recent general election in September 2022, have been propping up an administration led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, from the center-right Moderate Party, which finished third in the election, Newsweek reported.
Sweden Democrats spokesperson Ludvig Aspling said the incentive most likely would appeal to the several hundred thousand migrants who are either jobless or whose incomes were so low they needed state benefits to survive.
“That’s the group we think would be interested,” Aspling said, AFP reported.
