Tärnsjö, a once tranquil Swedish village 150km north of Stockholm, has now become a hotbed of resentment following the arrival of 20 refugee families. The tension between refugees and residents has gotten so bad that the police have even begun escorting migrant children as young as five to school to protect them from alleged abuse. Even teachers have reportedly become too frightened to walk with these children for fear of being targets of hate themselves.
According to reports, residents and newcomers have exchanged insults, thrown rocks at each other and set fire to cars, leaving many on both sides terrified to leave their homes.
“Racial tension has divided the village into two groups; those who support the immigrants and those who want them gone,” far-right councilor Michael Ohman told MailOnline.
“There has been fighting between immigrants and the people living here.
“The village integration works badly because people don’t want immigrants in the village. This is no longer a happy community, it’s divided and is not a pleasant place to live.”
He continued: “We have the highest tax rate in the county because we are paying for so many immigrants.
“Everyone who comes gets an allowance of 200 Kroner (£20) a week and free housing, and who pays for that? Us, taxpayers.”
As reported by MailOnline[1]:
The problems are said to have begun in September when migrants started throwing stones at locals’ cars, and residents retaliated by throwing them back.
The fires were further stoked on social media – and eventually locals, thought to be teenagers, began organising ‘events’ where a gang would gather to throw stones at the block of flats which has been turned into a makeshift migrant centre.
Due to the sheer number of migrants entering the country, the government has begun to take action, introducing border controls for the first time since the migrant crisis began.
Anna Kinberg Batra, the leader of Sweden’s right-of-center Moderate Party, has even called for people to be turned away at the border.
“If we do not act now, we will have a collapse in the system,” she warned, according to Deutsche Welle.
Since September, 80,000 refugees have arrived — the same number of people as throughout the entirety of last year. On one day alone, 2,000 arrived — another record in its own right. At the end of July, the official estimate for the total number of asylum seekers was hovering around the 74,000 mark. At present, the actual number is believed to be close to 190,000.[1]
For Sweden, with a population of 9.8 million, that is a population increase of almost 2 percent. The equivalent in the UK would be adding more than a million people to the population, or 6 million extra people in the United States.
“We have a situation where people are forced to sleep in tents outside the Migration Boards offices, and sleeping in their receptions,” says Mikael Hvinlund, the Swedish Migration Board’s director of communications.
“And we have a situation where the Migration Board no longer is able to provide shelter to the applicants.
“At our ferry terminals and train stations unaccompanied children disappear every day, it’s not fair to either us or them.”
Given the US government’s lax policy on migrants, and the seemingly never-ending conflicts in the Middle East, seeing a Tärnsjö scenario in the United States may not be such a remote possibility in the near future. If nothing’s done to solve the problem, we might soon bear witness to an America rife with tension, resentment and divisiveness due to the refugee crisis.
Source:
[1] DailyMail.co.uk
