Sweden seeks to entice more immigrants to repatriate by increasing grants for people volunteering to do so by an order of magnitude.
From 2026, the center-right government - backed by the nationalist Sweden Democrats - will support foreigners who return to their country of origin by as much as 350,000 kronor ($33,840), it said in a statement on Thursday. The payment would replace a current grant of 10,000 kronor plus reimbursement for travel costs.
The measure, modeled on a Danish system introduced in 2010, is part of the government's policies that aim to curb immigration and encourage emigration, after a surge in the number of asylum seekers arriving in Sweden during the migrant crisis of 2015.
The proposal was criticized for being inefficient and possibly denting efforts to integrate foreigners into Swedish society by Joachim Ruist, an economist who was appointed by the government to investigate the issue. He concluded that large increases of such grants may be "risky and therefore best avoided."
Still, migration minister Johan Forssell said at a news conference in Stockholm his government believes that it could have merits and is worth testing as a "paradigm shift for Swedish migration policy."
Based on Danish experience, Ruist found the number of people who choose to repatriate from Sweden could increase by about 700 annually with the proposed grant level. That would benefit public finances only after 15 years, and the limited positive long-term economic effect would be wiped out even with very small negative effects on social integration, he said.
