Sweden Counters Trump’s Immigration Criticism

Sweden has countered President Donald Trump’s claims that lenient immigration policies are bringing turmoil to the country, urging him to be “better informed” about the situation. Swedish Justice and Migration Minister Morgan Johansson took issue with Trump’s claims that the country’s lax immigration policies were causing instability. “The next time I hope the president, if he's going to speak about Sweden, is better informed about what the conditions really are here,” Johansson told Reuters in an interview published Thursday. Trump last week referenced a nonexistent terror attack in Sweden to bolster his calls for tighter immigration policies. He later walked back his claim and said he was simply referring to a rise in crime caused by the country’s troublesome immigration policies. Johansson said there is no evidence to support Trump’s claims. “We have very, very few cases of any of them (asylum seekers) committing crimes,” he said. “If you think that we have given protection to 143,000 Syrian refugees since 2011 you hardly ever see any of them in the crime statistics,” he said. Johansson went on to note that “playing different religious or ethnic groups against each other” will “never end well.”