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Compared to the July forecast, the number has risen slightly, from 13,000 asylum seekers to 13,500, but the levels remain at a record low, according to the planning director of the Swedish Migration Board, Henrik Holmer.
– Today we have a situation with a historically low number of asylum seekers. The main reason is global travel restrictions. Even if you take a boat across the Mediterranean, it’s difficult to get around from countries like Italy and Greece, he says.
In the budget bill for 2021, the government proposed a multi-year addition to immigration courts, which will be particularly notable when the number of cases drops at the same time.
Applicants will receive responses faster than otherwise and people will leave the accommodation within the receiving system faster. This in turn means that the costs of migration will drop dramatically, Holmer says.
The Swedish Migration Agency is in charge to receive 5,000 quota refugees a year, but according to the new forecast, the figure was scored at 4,500.
– They are people who are in very vulnerable situations in camps in different parts of the world. This year is very complicated and also very difficult to evaluate; it can be even less. It is difficult both for the people who will come here and for our staff who will first travel to the places where they are.
Trying to look to the future and assess how asylum immigration may be affected by the pandemic in the long term is difficult, according to Henrik Holmer. By 2021, the Swedish Migration Agency foresees around 18,000 applications and then a few thousand years more. But the pandemic has created an extremely unpredictable situation.
– It is always difficult to make forecasts, it is always difficult to assess how people should behave around the world, but now the pandemic has made it more difficult than ever, he says.
The forecast does not take into account to ongoing legislative processes, neither within the EU nor at national level. How a change in the law in line with the Migration Committee’s proposal, which is currently under consultation, may affect the number of asylum cases in the future, there is no forecast yet, according to Holmer.
– We are working on our response to the round of consultations that is in progress. Our main forecast is based on temporal law, but expires in July of next year.
– As soon as we have more clarity, we will make an assessment of the entire proposal. We are doing an analysis of legal aspects and an impact assessment on the forecast if the bills are introduced, he says.
