Response to interpellation 2025/26:120 on return grants

Migrationsministern Johan Forssell (M)

Madam Speaker! Tony Haddou has asked me how I justify the investment in return grants against the background that there are other needs, for example in rural municipalities.

Voluntary return creates an opportunity for a new start in life. It can involve people who, for various reasons, have not found their place in Sweden, or who have been in long-term exclusion, and who want to re-establish themselves in their country of origin or another country where they have the right to settle. It is therefore about giving people a chance to create a better life – on their own terms. The financial contribution for voluntary return has existed in Sweden since 1984. To facilitate those who wish to return, the government has decided to significantly increase the contribution starting from January 1, 2026. The contribution can amount to a maximum of 350,000 kronor per adult, 25,000 kronor per child, 500,000 kronor for spouses or cohabitants, and up to 600,000 kronor per household.

It is important to emphasize that this support is voluntary and is aimed at persons with residence permits who themselves wish to return. It is not a compulsion, but an opportunity. The Government has also taken several measures, including by giving Migrationsverket more tools, to reduce the risks of fraud, abuse, and incorrect payments of the benefit.

The Government assesses that an increased allowance can increase the incentives for voluntary return and contribute to reducing the number of people living in exclusion and the consequences that such exclusion has for Swedish society and for the individual.

In conclusion, I want to emphasize that the government's initiatives on repatriation are not occurring at the expense of rural municipalities. The needs of rural areas are important and are handled within the framework of other policy areas, such as regional development, education, and welfare.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Tony Haddou (V)

Madam Speaker! When the Left Party negotiates with a government, we ensure that we invest in welfare, in families with children, in households, and in ordinary people. We increase equality while simultaneously strengthening welfare and making the investments that are necessary for Sweden. We also push through higher pensions, improvements in health insurance, higher unemployment benefits, and many other good things that people all over the country appreciate and deserve.

But when the Moderates and the Sweden Democrats negotiate, households, welfare, and families with children must take a backseat. Cuts are being rolled out across the entire country. The entire cost shock is being placed on the households, and unemployment is being allowed to skyrocket. What is happening out there is that ordinary people have to take a backseat and live in economic insecurity while the cost of living only increases.

What they are coming with, which is the Sweden Democrats' biggest initiative in the budget negotiations, is a return migration grant of a full 1.4 billion in the first year – and then they want to expand it. The government's own investigator has cut the proposal – it is meaningless, counterproductive and harmful. And so we have a minister here who is supposed to carry out something that no one wants.

Municipality by municipality they say: Thanks, but no thanks! At this moment, 172 municipalities have said no to meeting the government's coordinator on repatriation, and more are expected to give the same answer. A large and clear majority of Kommunsverige is crystal clear. They say no to this. Even party comrades of the minister say no to this. It has become a municipal rebellion, which Jokkmokk in the north has kicked off.

The message is clear, Madam Speaker. Above all, the rural municipalities want to keep their residents regardless of where they come from. One does not make a distinction between people and people in one's own municipality. One neither encourages nor urges anyone to leave the country. Everyone is needed. One speaks well of one's residents.

I think this has been refreshing, because when did anyone in the government or the minister last say a good word about immigrants? Instead, we have lived with an undignified and degrading scapegoat policy over the last few years.

But that is not how reality looks. What was called the refugee crisis in 2015, which we heard the minister speak about earlier, was not a crisis for Sweden. We managed the task. Since then, we have brought 400,000 foreign-born people into the Swedish labor market. We have shortened the time it takes for newcomers to enter the Swedish labor market from seven years to three. Of the 35,000 unaccompanied refugee children who arrived then, eight out of ten have jobs, which is more than Swedish-born youth of the same age.

The reality out there is that everyone is needed. More than every other care assistant in elderly care is foreign-born. They deserve respect. Everyone who upholds the Swedish welfare deserves respect and a policy that looks out for them and stands on their side. Municipalities all over Sweden need their residents and will never participate in a campaign that divides society and makes people feel unwanted.

On the other hand, there are real problems in these municipalities. They struggle every day to make resources and welfare go together. They struggle with the fact that they are too few. They struggle with the fact that they are being left behind by this government.

That is why the Left Party has also submitted a committee initiative to redistribute these 1.4 billion and instead give them to rural municipalities so that we actually get a policy that increases equality, holds the country together and strengthens welfare.

It is urgent and necessary to redirect in this budget, because this is, as it has been described previously, money thrown into the lake.

(Applause)

In this speech, Samuel Gonzalez Westling, Malcolm Momodou Jallow and Karin Rågsjö (all V) concurred.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Malcolm Momodou Jallow (V)

Madam Speaker! I come from Malmö, one of the world's most international cities, a city where 184 nationalities share the same streets, schools and workplaces, a city that time and again shows what research has been in agreement on for decades. Malmö is a city where people from Kabul, Lagos, Banjul, Copenhagen and Oslo get up at dawn to keep the welfare alive.

Diversity is not a problem but a resource. That is known by the OECD, the EU Commission, the UN's development agencies, ILO, Unesco and all the other large institutions that actually look at reality instead of chasing votes out of fear.

I stand here as a part of that reality. I was born in Gambia and am at home in Sweden, one of all those thousands who every day go to work to keep Sweden running. We are the nurses who save lives. We are the teachers who lift children. We are the nursing assistants who carry the elderly care. We are the coach and role model in the children's basketball team. We are the entrepreneurs who create new companies. We are the cleaning staff who keep the hospitals clean. We are political community carriers and taxpayers.

We are Sweden in reality, in action and not just in words. We are people who have come here with dreams but also with responsibility and who have carried more than any society has ever had the right to demand.

Madam Speaker! It is precisely us that this government, governed by the Sweden Democrats' blue-brown pen, now wants to pay so that we will leave Sweden. They want to pay us to leave the country that we have built, leave the home where our children are born and leave a future that we ourselves have been part of creating.

They are spending 1.4 billion kronor of our tax money on a repatriation grant that no municipality has requested and that no expert studies or serious economists can defend. It is a policy that fundamentally builds on the idea that Sweden would be better if people who look like me did not exist here.

Madam Speaker! Let us speak plainly: This is not economic policy and it is not integration policy either. This is raw and explicit racism, straight out of the Sweden Democrats' wet dream of a Sweden without us. This is a policy built on the fantasy that the country would become better if people like me no longer existed here. But we are going nowhere. We are not leaving the country.

Even though Johan Forssell, the Tidöregeringen, and SD want to send us out, that is not what the municipalities and the Swedish people want. Sweden's municipalities say the same thing: We want to keep our residents. We need them. Without them, Sweden stops. The government's own investigator also warns clearly and argues that the proposal is risky and should be avoided because it will cause great societal damage.

What is the government doing then? They are overriding their experts, the municipalities, and reality. Why? Well, because they are locked in an ideological, racist project that has a single purpose: to get everyone who does not belong to the majority society out of Sweden.

Madam Speaker! It is not only short-sighted and irresponsible, it is shameful. Sweden deserves much better. The OECD's latest report shows that Sweden is already heading towards a demographic crisis with fewer people working and more people needing care. The last thing Sweden needs, in other words, is to lose labor.

Still, the government wants to spend 1.4 billion on driving out those who keep the country running. It is not only immoral, it is socio-economically insane. How can Johan Forssell justify that his government spends over 1 billion to get rid of people while schools are on their knees, healthcare is bleeding, safety is being eroded, and elderly care is screaming for staff, and we also have a housing shortage?

Madam Speaker! This is a policy that does not build a country, but dismantles it.

(Applause)

In this speech, Samuel Gonzalez Westling (V) concurred.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Karin Rågsjö (V)

Madam Speaker! The comedy group Grotesco performed a song several years ago that became very popular. It was called Bögarnas fel – excuse the language. You in the SD-dependent government seem to have been inspired by this, for in your politics you constantly return to the point that everything is the immigrants' fault.

Through constant statements about immigrants, you are marinating us in a pro-immigrant-hostile sauce. I am thinking, for example, of how the municipalities struggle to try to employ assistant nurses within elderly care and how dependent the municipalities are on precisely immigrants. The SD-dependent government is working with signal politics, not with politics for real.

What is the situation in Sweden today? Since Ulf Kristersson became Prime Minister, 100,000 more people have become unemployed in Sweden, and unemployment is now 9 percent. Our economic growth is at the bottom of the EU. The cost of food, rents and so on has increased by 27 percent, and poverty has doubled since 2022. The reforms that you are pushing through are reforms that target immigrants as Sweden's problem, for a Sweden that is being torn apart.

Of those employed in healthcare in Stockholm, 25 percent have an immigrant background. Nationally, 15 percent of those employed in healthcare and elderly care are immigrants. What happens to a country where the sitting government constantly talks about us and them? What happens to those who feel singled out as a constant problem? In this racist marinade, nothing good can grow.

The residents of the municipalities in Sweden need to increase in number. The demographics are very clear: more and more people are getting older, and fewer and fewer are of working age. Despite that, you very clearly state that the municipalities should get better at persuading immigrants to leave Sweden. What is the actual purpose? Those who work in elderly care need to increase in number, and even in healthcare, more people are needed. We need more people in the welfare sector.

We need a society where everyone feels that this is your country and my country, everyone's country. What is the Council of State's and the government's strategy when you want to give people a maximum of 600,000 kronor if they leave? This is about signal politics, so what signal are you sending? How are the rural municipalities helped by your strategy? How is the welfare strengthened?

(Applause)

In this speech, Samuel Gonzalez Westling (V) concurred.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Samuel Gonzalez Westling (V)

Madam Speaker! ”The good home knows of no privileged or marginalized, no favorites and no stepchildren. There, one does not look down on the other, there no one tries to gain an advantage at the expense of others, the strong does not push down and plunder the weak. In the good home, equality, consideration, cooperation, and helpfulness prevail.”

Madam Speaker! That is what Per Albin Hansson said in the Riksdag almost 100 years ago. With this as a guiding star, Sweden became one of the richest and most equal countries in the entire world.

If Sweden is a home, the state leadership is comparable to the parents of the Swedish people. At the forefront stand the government and its ministers. All of us who are parents know what responsibility that entails. That is why it is so unfortunate that Sweden has a government and a minister who grossly mismanage their responsibility in both words and actions – and then it is precisely this minister who is known for their speech on parental responsibility.

Sweden has great concerns. Unemployment is catastrophically high. Household costs are skyrocketing. These are costs that increase because landlords, banks, and food companies take the opportunity to make enormous profits in the wake of the crisis. Sweden is today, 100 years after Per Albin Hansson's speech about the folkhemmet, the country within the OECD where inequality is increasing fastest. The government blinks, holds its nose, clasps its hands, and wishes that things will resolve themselves. When the wishes do not come true, it is, according to the government, the immigrants' fault.

It is always someone else's fault. Immigrants are this government's stepchild. But it is rarely the immigrants who are the owners of the large food chains. It is not immigrants who are known for being large property owners, and it is not immigrants who own the large banks. It is the Ica director who raises food prices. The rents are raised by the director of the real estate company, and the interest rates on the mortgages are raised by the directors of the banks. But the government does not want to do anything about them.

The wealthy and powerful oppress and plunder the poor and weak, but the government blames the immigrants. Prejudiced views and, above all, xenophobic views are, as is known, unfortunately hereditary. What parents say at the kitchen table tends to stick with the children, take root and become worse. Children tend to take adults' and especially their parents' views and make them even more extreme. It is not just irresponsible, Madam Speaker. It is downright despicable.

Here we have a government that, instead of solving the families' problems, blames the stepchildren. Now the government, like the wicked stepmother in the tale of Hans and Greta, is trying to convince the father that it is best to get rid of the children. Fortunately, then, there are municipalities that do not distinguish between kelpies and stepchildren and which try to do what they can so that everyone can establish themselves in society.

In order for us to be able to become the good home together, the government needs to take its responsibility. Why does this minister not want to take their parental responsibility?

(Applause)

In this speech, Malcolm Momodou Jallow and Karin Rågsjö (both V) concurred.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Migrationsministern Johan Forssell (M)

Madam Speaker! Thanks to the Left Party's parliamentary group, who have come here today! I am very pleased that we have been given this opportunity to discuss the future of migration policy.

It was actually a Social Democratic government that introduced the return grant once upon a time, through Olof Palme in 1984. Several red-green governments – which the Left Party has supported throughout all these years – have had this. The Left Party therefore has a large co-responsibility for the fact that Sweden has a return grant today. My friends in the Left Party should perhaps reflect a bit on that, if it is so terrible. Why hasn't the Left Party demanded that it be removed? One could wonder about that. Perhaps it is so, Madam Speaker, that it is only under a bourgeois government that it is a problem and that otherwise it is good left-wing policy. What do I know? That matter of consequence is nothing that the Left Party distinguishes itself for, least of all in migration policy.

Madam Speaker! The return migration grant is not aimed at people who work and behave correctly or who have integrated into Swedish society. I have been clear and explicit about this the whole time. It is about people who have not done that, do not work, perhaps have not learned Swedish, and do not perceive that they are a part of Sweden today. One might long for home. One might have relatives, family, and friends in their home country and want to be reunited with them. Or perhaps one simply does not want to be integrated.

We know that today there are major problems with, for example, despicable honor culture. We know today that it is good that we accept the description that is correct in this. We have, for many years, had the opposite situation. Not least Vänsterpartiet has tried to downplay the serious problems with the despicable honor culture. But we know that this is a real problem today. So it should, of course, not be in Sweden.

I heard here that repatriation and voluntary repatriation are about racism. One can also describe it as being a human right according to the UN. As a Moderate, I do not usually speak of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights as racism, but if the Left Party wants to do so, then one has to let them.

I believe that the code word here is that return migration is voluntary. I think it is quite reasonable that there is support for that.

My friends in Vänsterpartiet have had very bad luck with this interpellation debate. Their theme is that those born abroad are met with racism and that they feel unwelcome. But I note, Madam Speaker, that just a few days ago an opinion poll was released showing that among those born abroad, the return migration grant and the increase of it are viewed positively. It actually concerned a clear majority among those born abroad who think that this is something good. It is difficult to reconcile with the high tone from my friends in Vänsterpartiet. They said that this was to be racism, and I don't know what it was at all. There was, as it were, no restraint on the words.

Vänsterpartiet can think what they want. I can only state that among those born abroad, they do not agree. There, they agree with me. That is an interesting observation. There was a very large difference: 42 percent of those born abroad were positive about this. The figure for the population as a whole was 27 percent. I think that is something Vänsterpartiet can reflect on.

Madam Speaker! The return grant is, however, nothing that solves the integration problems we have in one stroke. No one has claimed it does. But if one wants to return home, it is reasonable that one should be able to receive support and help to do so. It is something that has existed since 1984. It is part of a much larger whole.

Initiatives so that more people shall enter the workforce and learn the Swedish language, to introduce subsidy ceilings, and to make areas of exclusion safe again after a long period of mismanagement are parts of a larger whole to strengthen the sense of community in our country. And I note, as said, that a clear majority among those foreign-born agree with us that it is positive to increase the return migration subsidy.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Tony Haddou (V)

Madam Speaker! This proposal is fundamentally the Sweden Democrats' proposal, which the Minister is administering. Racism is in their DNA. We have seen a shift in Swedish politics and Tidö parties that have, over time, become radicalized to the extent that they stand here and defend this racism. It is that change and shift that has occurred in Swedish politics.

What we have witnessed recently is a total crash between the government's and the Sweden Democrats' ideological racism and opposition to immigration and the reality out in the country. The minister does not want to talk about it.

One wonders sometimes if the government has ever left Stockholm. People who have come to Sweden are crucial for the municipalities' care and the regions' healthcare. That is why they say that everyone is needed. It is a collective social construction that everyone needs to encourage – not encourage that certain people should leave.

For the municipalities all over Sweden that are protesting against this, it is not just about the proposal itself. It concerns the entire cursed social climate that has been created by the Tidö parties. All social problems are blamed on immigrants instead of taking responsibility for the skyrocketing unemployment, the housing shortage, or the cost shock that has been placed on the households. More time is spent trying to get people out of Sweden than on making it better for the people who live and reside in Sweden.

This is about municipalities that need to be strengthened. What we are talking about today are people who every day deliver healthcare, care, and school. Everyone is needed more than ever.

Instead of repatriation grants, money is needed to strengthen the welfare system, money that makes a real difference for people out there. It is not strange that it is precisely the rural municipalities that have led the way in saying no to the government's proposal on repatriation grants. They are those who have consistently been disadvantaged by the policy being pursued and who now must have it redirected.

Not even once does one receive a logical explanation from the government regarding this prioritization, to throw billions into the sea instead of using them for the municipalities out there. Is it not better to simply allocate those funds to the municipalities and do it over and do it right? It is not harder than that.

The Minister is trying, among other things, to claim that this should only be about sending out, for example, those who are unemployed. It is perhaps the most irresponsible thing in this debate I have heard from the government, which has increased unemployment by 100,000 people and let it spiral completely out of control. Now, one has a small, nice, and fictitious return grant that one presents as a solution.

You cannot lower unemployment by exporting the unemployed. The proportion of unemployed is determined by demand in the economy, not by the size of the population. It would be good if someone from the Tidö parties had a grasp of the labor market or the economy. The fact is that there is no causal link between immigration and the proportion of unemployed in a country. On the other hand, there is a clear causal link between, on one hand, a government that has deliberately choked the economy and investments and, on the other hand, unemployment. That is where the causal link lies. The responsibility lies entirely with this government and with the minister, not with immigrants.

The question is what constitutes an answer when operating theaters stand empty, home care is insufficient, health centers lack staff, and service deteriorates even further. We need people. What the municipalities say out there, in what is reality, is that everyone is needed. The government should listen to that.

(Applause)

In this speech, Samuel Gonzalez Westling, Malcolm Momodou Jallow and Karin Rågsjö (all V) concurred.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Malcolm Momodou Jallow (V)

Madam Speaker! Sweden is not built by walls, not by hatred and racism, not by mistrust and not by political symbolic gestures to keep a racist movement satisfied. Sweden is built by people, by us together, regardless of where we come from.

When the Minister and the Tidö Government talk about return migration, it is the immigrant nurses who save lives in the emergency room that they are talking about. It is the immigrant teachers who help children grow that the Minister is talking about. It is the immigrant nurses who take care of our parents when they can no longer take care of themselves and the immigrant entrepreneurs who create jobs, innovation, and faith in the future that the Minister is talking about.

The government wants to pay us to leave the country. These are the people who keep Sweden running every hour and every day. This is where the government's project collapses, in both theory and practice. The research is, in fact, crystal clear: Countries that invest in inclusion grow faster. Countries that shut themselves in lose innovation, competitiveness, labor, and social cohesion.

How does one defend ignoring one's experts? How does one defend ignoring the municipalities, reality, the statistics and the consequences? How can one defend driving a policy that solves nothing but risks damaging everything?

Madam Speaker! Sweden's municipalities show every day what actually builds Sweden: solidarity, diversity, hard work, creativity, and hope. We did not come here to be bought out. We came here to contribute and build a better Sweden. And we do that every day, every hour.

Let me conclude by saying this: As long as I am here, as long as I have a voice and as long as I am elected to represent the Swedish people, I will defend a simple truth. Sweden is not built by hate, racism and fear. Sweden is built by people.

I have a proposal. Some who actually need to leave the country and who do not contribute are the activist clubs. I encourage the minister to encourage the activist clubs to leave the country. They do not contribute to anything at all, except for spreading hate, threats, and violence.

(Applause)

In this speech, Samuel Gonzalez Westling and Karin Rågsjö (both V) agreed.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Karin Rågsjö (V)

Madam Speaker and Minister! The opposition to meeting the government's coordinator is compact, to say the least. A mapping that SVT Nyheter Norrbotten has conducted shows that there is a large opposition in just Norrbotten against cooperating on voluntary return. In addition to Jokkmokk, Boden, Kiruna, Gällivare, Överkalix, Pajala, Arvidsjaur, Arjeplog, Luleå, Kalix and others say no to dialogue, referring to the fact that they have a strong interest in retaining their inhabitants.

Överkalix writes, among other things, that their municipality would not function if they did not have people born in other countries working in the municipality. ”Our elderly and children would go hungry, our elderly would lack care in our residential homes and in home care, many shops would have to close or radically reduce opening hours, our tourism industry would be limited,” says Niclas Hökfors, a Social Democratic municipal councilor in Överkalix. The attention on the rural areas can therefore be said to be minimal in the government.

Many of Västerbotten's municipalities also decline the government's invitation to dialogue. We need more people in the municipality, and it becomes counterproductive if one is to work for people to leave from here, says Roland Sjögren, a KD municipal councilor in Lycksele.

In Malå, Cecilia Festin Stenlund, who is a liberal municipal councilor, says: We are not interested in this dialogue. Our biggest problem is that we have too few inhabitants. It is a threat to the welfare. We need more people, all we can get, and would conversely have wanted to get more immigrants in an orderly manner.

How could you land so wrongly on this issue, Johan Forssell? And why are you investing so one-sidedly in signal politics instead of on real politics?

(Applause)

In this speech, Samuel Gonzalez Westling (V) agreed.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Samuel Gonzalez Westling (V)

Madam Speaker! This country has so many incredibly large problems. We have a healthcare system that is in crisis. We have a school system that capitalists are just extracting money from. The government lets this decay. And instead of devoting themselves to solving the problems we face, one chooses to spend several billion to try to entice people to leave the country.

I find it very difficult to understand why those types of priorities are made, especially when a number of different municipalities' biggest problems are ensuring that healthcare and schools function, because the government is inclined to blame the municipalities and regions and say that it is their responsibility.

I want to inform the minister that the large revenue that municipalities have is dependent on how large the population actually is that lives and works there. But the government is trying to reduce the population and the money that municipalities and regions have to use to finance the welfare. It is completely senseless.

I urge the government to rethink, to take this proposal back to the drawing board and instead spend the money on things that society actually needs, for example healthcare and school in the small rural municipalities where the population is decreasing and one sees the resources being drained, not least due to the government's other policies.

(Applause)

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Migrationsministern Johan Forssell (M)

Madam Speaker! I will begin by agreeing with my friends in Vänsterpartiet on one thing: I believe it is serious if one poisons the social debate. I think the interpellator and several others should reflect on how they themselves act in this situation and whether they contribute to a better or worse social climate. If one, as Vänsterpartiet, dismisses a reform that a majority of those born abroad in Sweden view positively as racism, does one then contribute to a better or worse social climate? I also heard that the UN Declaration of Human Rights is racism, so I must say that Vänsterpartiet has a rather low threshold for what constitutes racism. This is Vänsterpartiet's policy. I do not need to comment on this further, because it is already so convoluted.

Let me however correct a factual error. No one is being sent out. Have the Left Party's members of parliament even read the proposal? No one is being sent out. There is no coercion in this. It is serious that members of parliament in this chamber are unnecessarily frightening people. There is no coercion, and no one is being sent anywhere. This is voluntary. But the longing to whip up a climate of hatred is so strong among the Left Party's members of parliament that facts do not matter. This voluntary support has existed under red-green governments with the support of the Left Party since 1984. The Left Party has supported red-green governments that have had a return migration grant. That is how the facts look.

Madam Speaker! There is a call for research. I return again and again to the fact that very many people who are born in other countries make important contributions to the Swedish labor market. I travel every week, and most recently last week I was in Helsingborg and spoke with very many. It is indisputable that they make great contributions, and thanks to their work, Sweden is a better country. But we cannot turn a blind eye to the major integration problems. Malmö was mentioned by a Vänsterpartist as a positive example. Let me just point out that Malmö has Sweden's second highest unemployment. Does Vänsterpartiet see that? It is also a fact that two-thirds of all long-term unemployed today are foreign-born. Does Vänsterpartiet see that? Does Vänsterpartiet see all the children growing up in families where mom and dad do not go to work? Does Vänsterpartiet see that exclusion and the segregation that takes hold as a consequence of a demand-free migration policy, the consequences of which we are still working with?

In this situation, the Left Party wants to return to the exact same unconstrained migration policy that led Sweden straight into the refugee crisis. During the debate, however, I have heard that it was not a crisis. That perhaps explains why we think so differently. The Left Party wants to go back to the situation we had in 2015, with 163,000 people, and have it that way year after year. Let me point out that it will lead to a situation with even more exclusion, even more segregation, even more insecurity, and even more polarization. Even more children will grow up without hope for the future and dreams. But it will not be that as long as we Moderates are in charge, because it is not a responsible policy.

I note, however, that the Left Party thinks differently, and if luck is on our side, one of the Left Party members here in the chamber may become Minister for Migration after the election in a government led by Magdalena Andersson. Then the Left Party's policy will be implemented – at very great costs for very many people in our wonderful country.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Tony Haddou (V)

Madam Speaker! I think the Minister needs to raise his level. Gaslighting does not belong in politics, and I think it is low of the Minister. We are debating a proposal that is so bad and has been so mauled that the government cancelled the investigator's press conference.

It is clear that for four years the government has been ruled by the Sweden Democrats, who disclaim all responsibility. This responsibility we are prepared to take by making the right priorities and redirecting these billions to the municipalities – instead of the government throwing them into the lake with a racist signal policy that makes people feel unwanted.

When it comes to the view on people with a foreign background, the views of the Left Party and the Tidö parties will always differ. In your scapegoat politics, you will always blame the immigrants. We will never buy that. We want more people to have jobs to go to, and we want as few as possible to be dependent on social welfare. We know who keeps Sweden running. We know that political measures are required. We do not do as the government does and blame everything on the immigrants or the individual and disclaim all responsibility regarding unemployment and such.

You who are listening to this debate, think about what your society would look like without people who were not born in Sweden, when you drop off the children at preschool, when you visit grandmother at the nursing home, when you take the bus to work or when you go to the dentist. Everyone who holds up Sweden and equips Sweden deserves better working and living conditions as well as respect, not any racist signal politics from the Sverigedemokraternas and Moderaternas budget negotiations. This is not pleasing for Sweden but lowers us to a low level, and this low level is represented by the minister. It is not worthy.

(Applause)

In this speech, Samuel Gonzalez Westling, Malcolm Momodou Jallow and Karin Rågsjö (all V) concurred.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Migrationsministern Johan Forssell (M)

Madam Speaker! It becomes frankly a bit ridiculous to hear the Left Party speak of a low level in the debate when they call a return migration grant that has existed since 1984 racism. It was introduced by Olof Palme and has existed under several governments that the Left Party has supported. Furthermore, return is a human right, according to the UN Declaration of Human Rights. This is becoming a bit ridiculous, Madam Speaker.

Very many people who have come to Sweden in recent years are making incredibly important contributions. I return to that all the time. They work in home care or schools, with the police or in the defense forces – or as entrepreneurs, whom I am now traveling around and meeting. They make Sweden better. But we cannot turn a blind eye to the consequences of a demand-free and failed migration and integration policy. We see the consequences all the time, for example in Malmö, which was mentioned as a positive example. Malmö has the country's second highest unemployment. We also cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that two-thirds of today's long-term unemployed are foreign-born. That is how Sweden looks. I note that Vänsterpartiet has not been reached by this knowledge, but I am completely convinced that the Swedish people have been reached by it.

Vänsterpartiet wants to return to a policy that led Sweden straight into the refugee crisis of 2015 and which created a large sense of exclusion and enormous problems for very many people, not least children, through segregation, insecurity, unemployment, parallel societies, and a sense of us and them.

But we shall never return to this policy, instead we shall build a country with opportunities for more to enter the Swedish labor market and to learn the Swedish language. It shall be clear what opportunities exist in Sweden but also what requirements we set in our Swedish community.

Here, two clear alternatives stand against each other: our policy or a return to the 2015 refugee crisis orchestrated by Vänsterpartiet.

The interpellations debate was hereby concluded.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)