#I am gangster 2016 crack

Personally, I don’t buy into the extreme belief held by some Swedes that immigrants largely come to our country to exploit its generous welfare system. And though Syrians make up the largest group of immigrants, those born in Iraq and Finland also contribute to Sweden’s foreign-born population. The total number of foreign-born people has rapidly increased over the last two decades, now amounting to 20 percent of the overall population.

Immigration numbers then reached an all-time high in 2016, as the country, alongside Germany, opted for a largely open-border policy when it came to Syrian refugees.Īs of 2021, Sweden had over 196,000 Syrian-born residents - a significant number for a country with a population of about 10 million. And government data shows significant migrant arrivals from Iran in the late 1980s and Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Sweden experienced labor-based immigration in the late 1960s. Sweden, which had a largely homogenous population in the past, has faced serious challenges in welcoming non-European immigrants into its society. And I believe this may partly explain the difficult situation facing the country today. Moreover, many of my friends, some of whom were born to parents from the Middle East, chose not to identity as Swedish, despite being raised in the country. It seemed to me that people like her faced an element of otherness that was difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. Still, she was never fully accepted as Swedish, despite having a near perfect command of the language and being clearly embedded within the culture. My mother, an Ethiopian refugee, certainly ticked all the “right” boxes, such as marrying a local and accepting whatever jobs came her way. And while I never expected the country to turn into a gangster’s paradise, it’s always been obvious to me that our approach to integration has been a ticking time bomb.īorn in the early 1980s, I witnessed firsthand just how difficult it can be to become part of mainstream Swedish society. Many Swedes, as I do, feel the country’s heading in the wrong direction.Ī few months ago, three young men in neighboring Örebro were shot dead over the span of eight days, part of a wave of gang violence spreading across Sweden. Her center-left coalition government risks being voted out of office in the country’s general election tomorrow, as the vote takes place against a backdrop of a rising inflation and mounting fears over Russian aggression in the Baltic Sea.

#I am gangster 2016 crack

While addressing the shooting, Sweden’s first female leader, who has been in office for less than a year, warned that criminal gangs now pose a threat for “anyone who happens to come in their way, even normal law-abiding citizens.” And she made a direct correlation between violence and a rise in the drug trade, which she vowed to have a national conversation about, and to crack down on crime by abandoning Sweden’s soft penal code.įor Andersson, talking tough on crime may be a necessity rather than a choice.