Sweden to pay more asylum seekers to leave

Published: 6 Nov 09 11:20 CET

Sweden has decided to expand a programme which gives unsuccessful asylum seekers money to voluntarily return to their homelands, at the same time as the number of refugee applications continues to drop

For the past two years, citizens from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, as well as from the West Bank and Gaza who have had their asylum claims rejected have been able to apply for funds from the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket) to help pay for the return trip home.

“We’ve had this option for nearly two years and have been reviewing it along the way, and based on that we’ve chosen to go ahead and open it up to more countries,â€