Daily Times

STOCKHOLM: Under huge strain from an influx of unaccompanied children seeking asylum, the Swedish government faces political pressure to undertake medical tests like X-rays to vet the age of young refugees despite opposition from doctors and lawyers.

The controversy reflects tensions over surging immigration into the Nordic country of 10 million after a public backlash that saw controls reimposed on the border with Denmark, from which most migrants have entered Sweden. Sweden took in 163,000 asylum seekers last year, the most per capita in Europe. They were among more than one million who streamed into the continent, fleeing increasing conflict and deprivation in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. More than a fifth, 35,000, of those reaching Sweden have been unaccompanied children, stretching services like schools. Reports of violence and assaults at centres for minors have added to the public disquiet and hardened anti-immigrant sentiment in a country long renowned for its humanitarian open-door policy towards the wretched of the earth.

Many have arrived without IDs, leaving Sweden the task of checking their real ages to ensure adults – defined as age 18 or over – were not pretending to be minors to secure asylum. Worried young adults may be swelling these ranks, many of Sweden’s opposition parties are calling for medical tests. Even the government has called for more non-medical testing while it awaits reform proposals in April to break the deadlock. There is a great incentive to claim to be a minor. Applicants have greater access to housing and schools and less chance of being deported.

“At the moment, very few, if any, age assessments are being done in Sweden,” Fredrik Beijer, Director of Legal Affairs of Sweden’s Migration Agency, told Reuters. Efforts to confirm ages have been hampered by the inability of authorities to carry out medical tests – such as X-rays of teeth and hands. The government said in November it wanted medical tests. But while such tests are not illegal, doctors have refused, saying they are inaccurate. “We believe that for a decision that has such large consequences in an individual’s life, one must require higher precision,” said Anders Hjern, a spokesman for the Swedish Paediatric Society.

But doubts have not stopped the centre right Moderates, Sweden’s biggest opposition party, calling on the migration agency to hire doctors for medical checks in an effort to lower the number of children arriving without families. “Unaccompanied minors make up around 20 percent of asylum seekers but they cost about half the migration budget,” said Hanif Bali, an Iranian-born lawmaker for the Moderates. Bali himself came to Sweden as an unaccompanied minor at age three.

“Out of my own experience, because I have lived in these kinds of homes, the environment becomes much harsher when you have older people there. You get prison rules and many children get caught up in the older people’s trouble-making.” Many other European Union countries do carry out medical tests.