Living in Stockholm for the past 12 years has consistently exposed me to questions of migration, immigration, asylum and refugees. Let me give you a few examples.

1. A Syrian family living in Lebanon moved to Sweden at the start of the 2015 refugee crisis. Life in Lebanon had become increasingly difficult for Syrians.
2. A convert to Christianity from Islam left a South-East Asian country because of fears of state persecution.
3. A group of Congolese refugees are resettled in Sweden through the UNHCR from a third country.
4. Plenty of well-educated people who moved here for love or work from developed countries.
5. Several not so well-educated people who moved here for love or work.
6. International students who came for studies and stayed.
7. People moving from countries where life is hard navigating rules designed to keep them out.

And I’m sure there are more examples.

For groups 1, 3, 4 & 6 the system works mostly in their favour. The bureaucracy always creates friction (‘hurry up!’) but generally they have the means to understand, afford and pass through the barriers without much need for outside assistance.

For groups 1 & 3 the only upside of a war is that it can give recognized refugee status. That means that the internationally agreed legal system designed (in theory) to help them works for them and there is a greater willingness (relative term) to host or resettle them. However the numbers are such that the systems can quickly get stressed and overwhelmed and large populations get stuck in limbo. They are not wanted where they are and there are no prospects in going back.

Jobs, wealth & education are always an advantage. Have any or all of those three and it significantly increases your chances of getting a contract and permission to stay. Most countries will need your skills, covet your money and value your education and all of those things are likely to have given you connections and opportunities for work. So groups 4 & 6 will generally do just fine. I’m in group 4.

The system is far less helpful for the other groups. Those who claim asylum (group 2) have a difficult road ahead of them because they need to prove their persecution. The task of assessing whether a claim is genuine is made all that harder by the presence of plenty of cases that are not (mostly from group 7).

Most people I know who go through the system will get denied on first hearing, and often on second hearing and the hope is that they’ll win on appeal. This process takes years and is very stressful because of the constant insecurity and instability of their lives. They live with their stories being questioned and being treated as cheaters by the system. One couple known to us who came here to escape state sponsored religious persecution struggled for 7 years before they were granted a residence permit.

Group 5 face an uphill road and it matters very much where they have come from. Life will not be easy but with some perseverance and entrepreneurial effort life here will likely be better than wherever it was they left. Many rich countries are ageing and shrinking, with a need for workers in lower-income brackets so there is an uneasy balancing act as countries find ways to let these people stay without giving the impression that anyone can come and try their luck.

Many from group 7 are here because they want a better life for themselves and their children. I do not blame them for that and nor should you. Their home countries are often poor, corrupt and dangerous (and if you’r reading this there’s high degree of probability that the reason their country is so poor is the fault of your country) and so they try the asylum route. However none of those reasons (poor, corrupt, dangerous) qualify as a reason to be granted asylum. This is I think the biggest misunderstanding by both the seekers and the receivers. And it is the sheer size of groups 5 & 7 that stress the systems of the richer nations.

For example, when in 2015 Sweden opened its doors to Syrians they also inadvertently opened them for tens of thousands of Iraqis, Afghans and around 5000 or so from the Balkans who clearly chancing their arm. The numbers of people claiming asylum that year jumped to a record 162,000 in a country of just ten million. The following year after the doors were slammed shut again it was down to 28,000.

For many people from corrupt, poor, dangerous countries they don’t really understand why they don’t qualify for asylum. Life can be just as hard and their prospects just as bleak as their neighbours across the border so why not them?

The big difference is often the absence of state persecution. So it doesn’t really matter if your home country is cripplingly poor or disease-infested, overrun by bandits, gangs and run by corrupt politicians you simply don’t qualify for asylum, no matter how much it makes sense to leave.

And making sense is a great shortcoming in the asylum decision making business. I know a convert to Christianity who if sent back to his home nation in the horn of Africa would almost certainly be killed. Denied, denied, denied.

I know someone from a East African nation with no compelling reason (as far as I could see) other than being poor, for being here. Claimed asylum and was granted. It’s often very confusing and seems arbitrary and that is not good because it adds a layer of cruelty.

It’s been a long lesson in seeing the power and privilege my passport(s) have given me. It’s shown me the considerable inequities and injustices of the system and the need for better solutions.

This week I’ll meet with a friend. He works in a care home (and is paid in cash), he pays his way, gets no benefits, takes nothing from the state. He has become a Christian here and if he went home death waits him. He has (bafflingly) just lost another appeal and is struggling with alcohol as a means of self-medicating his depression. To try some other country means he would lose everything he’s worked hard to establish with no guarantee of success. While the country that he is in doesn’t believe him and yet has granted thousands of his countrymen a place here.

So what to say other than ‘Lord, have mercy’.