While no one race of man has cornered the market on vice or virtue, contrary to popular belief these races are not interchangeable. — Roman
Sweden has decided to expand a two-year-old program that reimburses failed asylum seekers for their trip back home.
The program was available to only failed asylum seekers from Iraq,Afghanistan, Somalia, and the West Bank and Gaza. It will now include20 additional countries, mostly from Africa, in addition to parts ofRussia and Kosovo.
The Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket) estimate about 18,000will be repatriated in 2009. 42% of those cases will be voluntary, withmany of them involving people from Iraq.
It is also estimated that Swedish police will handle approximately10,000 cases of people who do not want to leave and will be forced toreturn home after having their asylum cases rejected.
The cost of the current repatriation assistance program iscalculated to be between US $5.7 to US $7.2 million. However, officialsare expanding it because it gets results.
“Our main objective – and what we’ve already seen from theevaluations we’ve done so far – is to have fewer cases handed over tothe police in relation to our total number of cases,” said CarolineHenjered, head of the agency’s division for asylum reception.
According to a recent report from the United Nations Refugee Agency(UNHCR), 10,000 asylum seekers came to Sweden in the first six monthsof 2009, down from 12,000 applications during the first half of 2008,Sveriges Radio (SR) reports.