Tag: refugee crisis

Sweden is too generous for its own good as the country most beloved by Bernie Sanders is pressured by huge migrant flows. As Bloomberg reports, when it comes to wealth, health and hospitality, Sweden has few rivals. But the same qualities that make the country a beacon of hope for the world’s huddled masses are straining it at the seams.

To see how close to the limit a record inflow of refugees is pushing Swedish generosity, visit Halmstad, a 14th century gateway to the North Sea known for its pristine beaches and golf courses. With no vacant apartments, the welcome wagon here is a double row of shabby, stifling trailers hauled in to house the overflow from the nearby Arena Hotel. There, almost 400 asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan and beyond live four to a room, all but forbidden from working until their claims are adjudicated. The process can take years.

Men with little to do but sleep and smoke crowd the lobby as kids careen down corridors on bikes. The sports bar, once busy with locals, is now a halal dining hall, the outdoor pool fenced-off and abandoned. It’s a scene increasingly common across Sweden, which welcomed 163,000 refugees last year alone, or about 1.6 percent of its population, a ratio equivalent to 5.1 million in the U.S.

Three years after Sweden and its Nordic neighbors were declared “The Next Supermodel” of fiscal prudence by The Economist, the welfare system pioneered in Stockholm is starting to buckle under the weight of Europe’s biggest migration wave since World War II.

Even dovish politicians concede the pace of refugee spending, which is on track to surpass that for national defense in Sweden for the first time this year, can’t be sustained without revisions to a social contract based on high taxes, cradle-to-grave entitlements, tight regulation and AAA credit.

Continue reading “Sweden’s Refugee ‘Crisis’ Has “Gone Past The Breaking Point””