Ahead Of Elections, A Swedish City Reflects The Country's Ambivalence On Immigration
In Malmö, where roughly a third of the city's residents were born outside Sweden, voters are gearing up for Sunday's national election — which will be dominated by immigration issues.
On Sunday, Swedes will vote in national elections for the first time since a wave of immigration changed the country's tone of debate. Sweden began opening its doors to hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers after the last election, in 2014. Since then, well over 300,000 people have applied for asylum, mostly from Syria, as well as from countries including Iraq and Iran.
Nationalists point to a rising crime rate and incidents of gang violence as evidence of the need for closed borders. Those on the left point to Sweden's strong economic growth, low unemployment rate and overall relative well-being as a sign that more countries could be following the lead of this self-described humanitarian superpower.
What's certain is that
