The Swedish Parliament will vote to oblige its public sector voters to ‘snitch’ on undocumented migrants, as the latest addition to Stockholm’s far right’s crackdown on migration
Gaia Neiman
A vote in Sweden’s parliament could force public sector workers to report undocumented people to authorities.
The bill, popularised as the ‘snitch law’, will be voted in on Monday (15 June), as part of a greater policy of migration deterrence by the right and far-right Swedish government.
The Swedish democrats’ ‘era of deportation’ resulted in multiple policies restricting new arrivals and speeding up deportations, which have only been intensifying in light of an upcoming general election at the end of the summer.
Obliging ordinary public workers to comply with its crackdown on migration, the government’s plan would result in anyone from the Public Employment Service to the national Pensions Agency needing to inform the police of any contact with an undocumented person, of which there are believed to be 30,000 to 50,000 in Sweden.
The reform has invited concern that vulnerable people will refrain from seeking help in public services for fear of being reported, resulting in greater chances of exploitation and untreated illness.
The bill is part of a bigger strategy to reduce the accessibility of basic rights and services, “to signal to migrants in general and undocumented people in particular, that life in Sweden will be so hard for them that they better leave,” director Hannah Laustiola from humanitarian defenders Doctors of the World told EUobserver.
Trade unions and employment organisations have expressed disagreement with the proposal and its opposition to working ethics, with the European Federation of Public Service Unions highlighting examples of past attempts of reporting obligations in Germany and the UK being ineffective in slowing the flow of migration.
“Public service workers are not ICE agents. They are not snitches,” the group said in a statement.
Increased public suspicion would become a slippery slope into normalised racial profiling and alienation of marginalised people, with gray guidance opening the door to over-compliance.
“People tend to comply before they have to, as we learned from fascism in the Nazi regime in Germany,” said Lisa Pelling, head of the Stockholm-based think tank Arena Idé.
