Sweden said it expects to expel up to 80,000 migrants whose asylum requests will likely be rejected, as another 24 people including children drowned off Greece Thursday in the latest tragedy in the Mediterranean.
As the continent grapples with efforts to stem a record flow of migrants, Swedish Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said the mass expulsions of people who arrived in the Scandinavian country last year would require the use of specially chartered aircraft.
The deportations would be staggered over several years, Ygeman said.
“We are talking about 60,000 people but the number could climb to 80,000,” he told Swedish media.
The country of 9.8 million is among the European Union states with the highest proportion of refugees per capita.
Of the 58,800 asylum requests handled by Swedish migration authorities last year, 55 percent were accepted. Many of those requests were however submitted in 2014, before the large migrant flow began.
Ygeman said he used the 55 percent figure to estimate that around half of the 163,000 asylum requests received in 2015 would likely be rejected.
Migration Minister Morgan Johansson said authorities faced a difficult task in deporting such a large number of migrants, but insisted the rejected applicants would have to return home.
“Otherwise we would basically have free immigration and we can’t manage that,” he told news agency TT.
However, 7,590 people who had their asylum applications rejected last year went underground, and for the period 2010-2015 their number totalled 40,345, according to the migration agency.
