Sweden pays immigrants to leave as right-wing crackdown intensifies

Ahead of a tight election on September 13, Sweden's right-wing government is paying some non-EU residents up to €31,500 (SEK 350,000) to leave the country, per Reuters and The Independent. The policy marks a dramatic reversal for a country that took in 163,000 asylum seekers in 2015, now offering cash to 171 takers this year, according to the same outlets.

Bottom line — Only 171 people took the pay-to-leave offer, while Sweden's migration agency has deported 458 Britons since Brexit, per Reuters and the Guardian.

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• Sweden's asylum intake fell 96% by 2025 from 2015 levels, per Reuters and The Independent.
• The budget for the scheme is 1.3 billion Swedish crowns, Reuters reports.
• The Sweden Democrats, a far-right party backing the government, launched ads reading 'Do you miss Mogadishu? The remigration grant will help you get home,' according to Reuters and The Independent.
• The Guardian reports that 78-year-old British widow Joyce Thomas faces deportation after 22 years in Sweden over a late post-Brexit application; she called it 'a death sentence.'
• Sweden has deported 458 British citizens since Brexit, per the Guardian, and 2,490 UK nationals were ordered to leave between 2021 and 2025, per Eurostat data cited by the BBC.
• Sweden no longer awards permanent residency permits and introduced mandatory citizenship tests in August, per Reuters and The Independent.
• Russia is not prioritising interference in the Swedish election, according to the EU Observer citing the Agency for Psychological Defence and think tanks, but pro-Russian troll networks remain active.
• Historian Jenny Andersson told Le Monde that Sweden's image is 'aligning with a clearly neoconservative axis.'

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