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Sweden to deport up to 80,000 asylum-seekers

Published:Thursday | January 28, 2016 | 11:17 AM
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AP
Migrant children Nor, Saleh and Hajaj Fatema from Syria sleep outside the Swedish Migration Board, in Marsta, Sweden.
AP
Sweden's Interior Minister Anders Ygeman, announcing that the government will impose temporary border controls as the Nordic country struggles to receive tens of thousands of refugees in Stockholm, Sweden.
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STOCKHOLM (AP):

Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said Sweden could deport between 60,000 and 80,000 asylum-seekers in coming years.

Ygeman told newspaper Dagens Industri that since about 45 per cent of asylum applications are currently rejected, the country must get ready to send back tens of thousands of the 163,000 who sought shelter in Sweden last year.

"I think that it could be about 60,000 people, but it could also be up to 80,000," Ygeman was quoted as saying.

His spokesman, Victor Harju, confirmed the quotes yesterday, adding that the minister was simply applying the current approval rate to the record number of asylum-seekers that arrived in 2015. Harju added: "That rate could, of course, change."

Germany and Sweden were the top destinations for asylum-seekers in Europe last year.

In the sea near a Greek island, the coast guard said that at least 11 people, most of them children, died on Thursday in the latest migrant boat sinking.

Ten people were rescued, while the bodies of four boys, three girls, three men, and one woman were recovered.

Romanian border police also said yesterday that they had rescued 119 asylum-seekers from Africa, including 34 children, who were on an inflatable dingy in the Mediterranean, trying to reach Europe.

The migrants were dehydrated and had signs of hypothermia when they were picked up on Tuesday. They came from Gambia, Senegal, Liberia, Mali, Sierre Leona, and Guinea Bissau and were planning to travel to the Schengen area.