Sweden’s migration agency has called for sports halls and government emergency facilities to be turned over to migrant housing, as present facilities are totally overwhelmed by the volume of new arrivals.
Migrants making it to Sweden have now hit 1,500 a day – a not inconsiderable amount for a nation of just nine million people – and the Migration Agency (Migrationsverket) has warned the nation will run out of places by the end of the week unless urgent action is taken. Yet instead of considering changes to their immigration policies, as is happening in neighbouring state Denmark, Sweden is scrabbling to find new places to house its growing citizen base.
Migrationsverket’s director general Anders Danielsson has now called on local authorities to offer up their facilities for their use, eyeing sports halls and emergency disaster shelters as potential homes for his new Swedes. As it is becoming harder to house the newcomers in permanent accommodation, many migrants find themselves living in the shelters well beyond their asylum applications being approved, which is creating a backlog of people taking up beds for newcomers, reports TheLocal.se.
Articulating his desire to open up government owned sports halls that hadn’t already been comandeered by his agency, Danielsson said: “Swedish municipalities must now find accommodation for all the people who have been given asylum but haven’t yet had the chance to start a new life on the national territory”.
A spokesman for the agency said: “The situation is very tight. We’re reviewing our accommodation capacity and looking for solutions. It could be gyms but it could also be evacuation facilities designed for natural disasters or other exceptional circumstances”.
This isn’t the first time the Swedish government has reacted to a pending migrant crisis by moving to make life more comfortable for newcomers, inadvertently encouraging even more to come, exacerbating the overcrowding problem.
Breitbart London reported last month on the Swedish government’s urgent action to deal with the migrant crisis, as prime minister Stefan Löfven called on government agencies to work together to get free housing, healthcare, education, and other handouts as quickly as possible to migrants after their arrival.