Refugee crisisSweden will expel 80,000 refugees whose asylum applications were denied

Expulsions begin with Sweden taking the lead // Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Sweden’s interior minister Anders Ygeman said on Wednesday that Sweden plans to expel up to 80,000 asylum seekers who entered the country in 2015 and whose applications had been rejected.

“We are talking about 60,000 people but the number could climb to 80,000,” the minister was quoted as saying by Swedish media. He added that the government had asked the police and authorities in charge of migrants to organise their expulsion.

Ygeman noted that normally expulsions are carried out using commercial flights, but in light of the large numbers involved, specially chartered aircraft would be used – and the process would take a few years.

DW reports that the United Nations said that more than 46,000 people have arrived in Greece in the first three weeks of 2016.

Sweden, with a population of 9.8 million people, has accepted more than 160,000 asylum seekers in 2015.

The number of migrant entering Sweden has dropped dramatically since Sweden, on 4 January, reintroduced border checks on its border with Denmark. For the first time since 1954, people trying to enter Sweden from Denmark must present a valid ID to border guards.

Swedish authorities are increasingly worried about the security situation at overcrowded asylum centers. On Monday, a Syrian teenager stabbed a Swedish employee to death at a center for unaccompanied youths. The attack occurred at a center for 14- to 17-year-olds in Mölndal, near Gothenburg, on Sweden’s west coast.

The employee was 22-year-old woman  whose family immigrated from Lebanon two decades ago.