FECL 07 (July/August 1992):

DRAFT BILL FOR "MASS FLIGHT" INTRODUCES A NEW TERM IN REFUGEE POLICIES: THE "ASSISTANCE SEEKER"

The Swedish government intends to introduce special provisions allowing immigration authorities to escape individual examination of asylum applications. The provisions would also allow the government to requisition by constraint sport halls and other spaces for the accommodation of refugees. In the government's opinion the risk for Sweden of being sooner or later confronted with a mass influx of refugees has significantly increased with the disintegration of Eastern Europe.

According to the Swedish immigration authorities (SIV), the country is at present not prepared to cope with war-like mass flight.

The draft bill provides for the following measures:

• In case of "very large numbers" of refugees fleeing to Sweden, they will no longer have the right to an individual asylum procedure. "Mass refugees" will be considered as "assistance seeking collectives".
• It will be possible to submit refugees to collective internment for a "limited time" in order to enable the registration and screening of potential asylum seekers. The eventual examination of asylum requests would however be postponed to a later date.
• Through registration the "assistance seekers", as the immigration authorities wish to call them, shall obtain a provisional right to stay and work in Sweden.

SIV would be responsible for the registration procedure which would be carried out by the police. The police would also be in charge of the screening and transport. Regional and municipal authorities would among other things be responsible for reception, housing and food.

Comment

The Swedish draft bill represents a new step in the terminological devaluation of refugee status. In the beginning of the 80s the term unknown before of "asylum seeker" was first introduced by the Germans. By the application of the term "asylum seekers" refugees were ear-marked in public as suspected "false refugees". In its turn the "assistance seeker" risks to be seen by the public as an element not even deserving access to an asylum procedure - a "false asylum seeker", so to say.

While further undermining the status of refugees, the draft bill would provide Sweden with the opportunity to dispose of large numbers of work force, tolerated whenever and as long as useful for the economy of the sparsely populated kingdom.

Quite smart, indeed.