As Sweden tightens its immigration policies, many families who have built lives in the country are now facing the threat of deportation. Thamer and Faten, a married couple from Iraq, are among those caught in the crosshairs of the crackdown, despite their third child being born in Sweden.
The couple arrived in Sweden on work visas with their two sons, who are now 20 and 16 years old. Their youngest child, born in 2021, is a Swedish citizen. However, after their asylum applications were denied and their work visas expired, Thamer and Faten now face the prospect of being deported back to Iraq, where they fear their children could be harmed by a criminal organisation.
“There are people who have lived in Sweden for 30 years but they don’t talk Swedish like me,” said Thamer, 52. “I write as well, not just speak. What do they want more than that? I am not a criminal.”
Thamer said he was offered a job as a car mechanic but was unable to take it because his work visa had expired. “Sweden wants men and I have three. Can they not make use of them?” he asked.
The situation is echoed in the case of Sofiye, who arrived in Sweden from Uzbekistan as an asylum seeker in 2008. For much of that time, she was able to build a life in the Scandinavian country, working for the municipality and having her youngest son born in Sweden. However, three years ago, after unsuccessfully seeking refugee status four times, Sofiye lost her right to work and is now living under the threat of a deportation order.
Sofiye and her two children are currently living in limbo in an asylum return centre near Stockholm’s Arlanda airport, causing her severe anxiety and physical distress. “I cannot sleep. I sleep just one or two hours. I throw up. I am so stressed. I don’t want to speak to the children because here,” she said, pointing to her head, “is occupied. I don’t know physically, mentally what I should do.”
The asylum return centres, part of Sweden’s increasingly hostile asylum and immigration policy, are designed to house an estimated 11,000 asylum seekers in the coming year. The centre-right government, which depends on the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats, has stated that it wants to “redirect focus” away from receiving asylum seekers and instead become a “country for labour immigration”.
“Many people that we meet say to us: ‘We came to Sweden believing this was a country that respected human rights: where are they?'” said Nannie Sköld, a counsellor at Stockholm Stad mission’s Who Am I Tomorrow? project, which provides legal and psychosocial support to individuals and families with deportation orders.
As Sweden’s immigration policies continue to tighten, families like Thamer, Faten, and Sofiye, who have established themselves in the country, find themselves facing an uncertain future and the threat of being forced to leave the only home their children have ever known.
