Swedish Moderate Party MP Hanif Bali has claimed that of 7,000 Afghan “high school amnesty” migrants in Sweden, just 68 have full-time work.
Bali, a noted critic of mass migration, pushed back against those who support the so-called “high school amnesty” for around 7,000 Afghan migrants that was passed in 2018 despite indications that 78 per cent of the supposedly underage migrants eligible were actually adults.
“Of the approximately 7,000 rejected migrants who received the high school amnesty, only 68 have managed to get a permanent job, and after 5 years in the country, 5,800 have still not completed their high school studies,” Bali said on Friday.
“Yet they are described by all amnesty advocates as having ‘education and jobs’. Pure lie,” he alleged.
Bali’s claim matches prior trends that have shown high rates of unemployment among asylum seekers in Sweden who have arrived since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015.
A 2019 report claimed that as many as 90 per cent of the 40,019 migrants who came to the country in 2015 and were granted residency were unemployed, and eight of the ten municipalities who took in the largest share of migrants per capita had unemployment rates well above the national average.
Economist Per Lundborg claimed last year that a lack of education was the main hurdle for asylum seekers, saying: “Sweden is one of the most high-tech countries in the world, where we streamline simpler jobs. Therefore, the knowledge gap is too large for many of the refugee immigrants who come here.”
Earlier this year, the Swedish Public Employment Office revealed that 43 per cent of the migrants without work lacked a high school education, compared to just 18 per cent of unemployed native Swedes.