Eco-Unfriendly: Sweden Skimps on Environment to Afford More Migrants

Sweden's recent budget amendment has allocated extra money to the police, asylum accommodations and Migration Board amid drastic cuts in release and environmental efforts, which clearly indicates that the country's bitter struggles with migration problems are far from over.

In total, the Swedish police will this year receive 283 million kroner (roughly 35 million dollars) more than the previous year. The Swedish government agreed that the police force's workload had drastically increased because of the refugee situation. The police wrote on their website that the extra allocations will be spent on tackling the crime and the violence in asylum accommodation centers, as well as bolstering the country's border protection to bar immigrants from entering the country illegally.

In contrast, the Security Police was only allocated 10 million kroner (1.2 million dollars) for its bid to better cope with the growing terrorist threat against Sweden. Obviously, this reflects Sweden's priorities.

Meanwhile, crime rates have been soaring across the country, following the influx of refugees, which may prove a goldmine for Sweden's lawyers. In a controversial attempt to ease the bureaucratic burden, budget allocations for legal assistants were raised over 11 percent to 300 million kroner (roughly 37 million dollars), news outlet Fria Tider reported.

"The expenditure has increased more than expected, partly due to increased negotiation periods for criminal cases, partly due to the increase in complex cases with multiple defenders," the government's proposition explained.

However, last year's flock of immigrants turned out to be the biggest winners in terms of raw math, as over 28.8 billion extra kroner (3.5 million dollars) will be spent on accommodation and benefits for asylum seekers. This is a more than a threefold increase compared to the initial plan.

Additionally, Sweden's Migration Board will receive nearly 2.2 billion kroner extra (270 million dollars). The increase is planned to cover the standing understaffing the board is suffering from. Over the past years, the Migration Board's staff has more than doubled, yet is still unable to deal with increasing queues.

When it comes to the losing end of the budget, the developing countries depending on the Swedish aid have ended up at a loss, as Sweden's international effort was slashed by 4.1 billion kroner (500 million dollars). Another major loser is Mother Nature herself, as Sweden's environmental efforts were cut by a quarter of a billion kroner (30 million dollars).