Immigration, ethnically or not!?

In Sweden, we have a political party that has grown large due to a single issue—at least primarily: immigration. During this election campaign, there has been talk of immigrants and Swedes. Who is a Swede? Can one become a Swede? Is there a difference between being ethnically Swedish and culturally Swedish?

One may have whatever opinion one likes about these issues, but the party is not pitting these groups against each other; it is simply stating a fact. A conservative politician wanted to take the matter to its logical conclusion and wrote an article about it. He was born in Sweden to Iranian immigrant parents; he knows the language, the culture, and so on, yet when he takes a DNA test, the results show that he is from the Middle East.

A Social Democratic politician has taken this idea further, comparing immigration to Sweden with the Swedes who emigrated to the USA in the 19th century—but is such a comparison valid?

There are parallels:

Between 1850 and 1930, around 1.2 to 1.5 million Swedes left Sweden, primarily for the United States. In the mid-19th century, Sweden had a population of only about 3.5 million, so this amounted to nearly one in five Swedes. By 1910, one in five Swedes was living in the United States.

The crop failures of 1867–69, a shortage of arable land, religious oppression, and the lure of free land and jobs in America—it is a classic case of "push and pull."

People moved to where their relatives and neighbours from home had already settled—the Swedish communities around Minnesota and Chicago are a clear example.

But there are major differences!

The United States in the 19th century was an expanding continent with an extreme shortage of people and an explicit goal of populating the country. Free land was distributed through the Homestead Act—160 acres, provided you cultivated it. Sweden today is an already populated, high-tech country with regulated labor and housing markets.

Swedish-Americans received virtually no assistance from the US government. There were no language classes for immigrants, no financial aid, and no housing guarantees. If you couldn't make it on your own, you either starved or returned home. That is also why approximately 20% returned to Sweden. Immigration to Sweden today takes place within one of the world's most extensive welfare states, where the government assumes significant responsibility for the integration and settlement of newcomers.

Until 1924, the United States had essentially open immigration for Europeans; no asylum processing or visas were required. Immigration to Sweden today is governed by EU regulations, asylum law, and rules regarding labor and family reunification—entirely different legal frameworks.

This is perhaps the biggest difference.

After all, the Swedes were European Christians who could quickly integrate into an Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture. They formed enclaves where schooling and religious services were conducted in Swedish, yet the second and third generations became English-speaking Americans almost automatically. For many of today’s immigrant groups in Sweden, the linguistic and cultural gap is wider, and the expectations regarding the preservation of their native language and identity are different.

So in a way you can not compare