Swede here, shit is BAD, but this is relative to how things used to be before this shit started, so in relative global terms Sweden is still a damn good place to live.
That being said, this behavior should be seen as a warning to not take culture clashes lightly.
I am sure I am going to catch a lot of heat for this, but damn it, it needs to be said.
The gangs we see are a direct result of a terribly run migration policy.
We have taken in far, far, far too many migrants in a way, way, way too short ammount of time.
This combined with a integration policy that keeps failing over and over as we continously refuse to enforce even the most basic attempt by migrants to integrate. There are many migrants who has lived in Sweden for many years without speaking either Swedish or English, they still have a right to free interpretors when dealing with doctors and government services, this is fucking mental.
We have punnishments and laws fitting Swedes from the 1960s or so, they don't do shit against the modern gangs.
So what needs to be done?
Start actually deporting criminals, log their DNA and give them a lifetime ban on returning, check all migrants against this database.
To those born in Sweden, start instituting extra long prison terms for criminals who keep reoffending.
Enforce learning the Swedish language and check compliance with in-person tests, and mandatory lessons. If you need an interpreter after 3 years, you have to pay for it yourself.
Wait, why would anyone have the right to free interpreters at any time? That sounds like such a waste of public resources and like you said, enables people to never even try to learn the language.
As an initial concept, it is resonable to help people get the care they need even if they don't speak the language, but after 5 years of working to live here you should be expected to be able to communicate without an interpreter, even if it is not fluent.
I am down with this and even some more, except regarding having to pay for interpreters after 3 years. Working folks are hardly going to have the time to learn a whole ass language to proficiency in just 3 years, especially with kids to take care of
I moved to France,not able to speak a word, and within 3 years, I was working in a french only environment. It's difficult, and I won't pretend that everyone will have my luck, and opportunities,but it's not unreasonable either.
Deportations, as in after commiting a crime, should be on the table instantly for violent crimes commited by migrants.
Note that I am not talking about general deportations of normal, well adjusted migrants, but migrants commiting violent crimes.
As for language and culture classes, we allready offer them for free to all migrants, Svenska För Invandrare, it is however critisized for only offering low quallity classes, which is a big problem that needs to be adressed.
I asked Finnish colleagues what they thought of the situation in Sweden - and not just the latest events, but how the country has turned evermore violent and dangerous for the past 20 years. They told me quite unapologetically: "Well, the Swedes opened their borders wide to all kinds of people from wildly different cultural backgrounds coming from really troubled countries and the Finns haven't. Now they have the problems those people brought with them and we don't."
I'm starting to think there's some truth to this. But as a foreigner, whenever I go to Finland, the reverse - the lack of cultural diversity, the sea of whiteness and the absolute lack of non-Finnish-sounding names - is equally unsettling, rather stifling and feels genuinely bizarre sometimes.
While I personally believe that immigration is both humane and necessary for the aging western economies, I think it's safe to say that the purely optimistic, citizenship first and questions later mentality has proven a failure.
Without rules and a culture that demands assimilation instead of parallel existence in a separate microcosm, the new citizens have difficulties identifying with the new social order they are moving into, and naturally little respect for it either. Not to mention that by corralling immigrants into ghettos the formation of parallel structures is encouraged and the native population alienated.
While I personally believe that immigration is both humane and necessary for the aging western economies,
Oh, wow. Instead of solving the problem where people don't consider it plausible to have at least 2 children, let's bring in more people from poorer countries.
Without rules and a culture that demands assimilation instead of parallel existence in a separate microcosm,
Yeah, see, it's fine to have separate microcosms for any sane society. Just some are toxic.
It's simply about education and, yes, not letting in people you don't want.
Except you can, but it requires to let go of any ideas related to cultural purity or isolationism, while simultaneously not getting cold feet when it comes to turning back people who clearly can't possibly integrate.
...not for long if things keep going at this rate. In just a few years we've skyrocketed from having amongst the least violent crime in Europe to being up there with the Balkan countries - and it just keeps getting worse for every year.
"Much higher"
Notably, the murder rate in Sweeden and Finland is a full third below the lowest state in the US. And the US average is about 5 per 100k.
Sweden also is a sea of whiteness, beyond a small number of BAME immigrants often concentrated in banlieue-like outer suburbs and the adoption of kebab-meat pizza as a comfort food. Even in Stockholm, it’s a lot less diverse than, say, Paris or Berlin.
As a Swede, I sometimes wonder if I would feel more at home moving to one of the other Scandinavian countries - because I don't really feel at home here anymore.
Of course you can, you just have to not maintain an exclusive society, because an exclusive society depends on excluding others, and when the "others" can't be excluded anymore, that's when the full blown racism kicks in. Knowing that people see racism as some inevitability rather than a deliberate system of oppression created and imposed by individuals who benefit from its existence (if to varying degrees) is pretty fucking terrifying.
The idea that there was no crime before immigration, or that the Finns (or Nordic people in general, who all maintain a similar society and are facing similar issues with racism now that they can't maintain their white supremacist exclusivity anymore) are innocent little lambs who have never committed a crime before the brown people arrived is not only absurd, it's pretty racist and disgusting in its own right.
They love to laud themselves as the best most developed most progressive countries, but the reality is they're just a couple of decades, if not a century behind the rest of Europe when it comes to integration (this does not equal equity or equality, just integration), and are following exactly the same route as the other countries have - capitalist government and the media that supports it need a scapegoat (who they've rigged the system against so they'd have to struggle by default, living in poverty, feeling excluded, attacked for their race) to shift blame and attention to, while they continue to exploit the people of their country (the fact that there are Nordic billionaires easily contradicts any claim to socialism they might raise, and you don't need to look far to thoroughly debunk it altogether).
The fact that you're an immigrant and are seriously considering there's some truth in this racism is pretty fucking sad and scary, but mostly goes to show just how powerful the propaganda is (and how similar it is in all countries, which is probably why it hits a nerve with you even though you don't live there).
It all comes down to Erdogan. He's the one harboring the heads of these criminal organizations because they pay him well. The Turkish government essentially became a part of a drug empire.
I though that part of Europe was suppose to be Utopian? I guess everyone focuses on the positive from an international perspective. Regardless, I still know nothing about Sweden other than it is the headquarters of Ikea
In America migrants just want to be as American as possible as quickly as possible. We don't have the experience to help you with this one thing. Americans also just learn Spanish for the largest foreign group between their broken English and our broken Spanish we can work out most things no need for state sponsored translators that is a ludacris idea.