Sweden’s ‘snitch law’ immigration plan prompts alarm across society

2024/08/13 Leave a comment

Of note:

Doctors, social workers and librarians are among those in Sweden who have sounded the alarm over a proposal being explored by a government-appointed committee that would force public sector workers to report undocumented people to authorities.

The proposal – which has been referred to as the “snitch law” by some – was among the many measures included in a 2022 agreement struck between four rightwing parties in the country. The deal paved the way for a coalition government involving three centre-right parties with parliamentary support from the far-right anti-immigration Sweden Democrats (SD).

Nearly two years after the SD, a party whose manifesto seeks to create one of Europe’s most-hostile environments for non-Europeans, became Sweden’s second-biggest party, work is under way to turn the proposal regarding public sector workers into law. The committee has been instructed by the government to present proposals on how this could be drafted into law, with plans to present their findings to the government by the end of November.

Despite being in the early stages, the idea, which could result in up to a million workers, from dentists to teachers, being forced to report any contact with undocumented patients, students and authorities, has faced widespread opposition from rights campaigners and professional associations.

“This proposal is utterly inhumane,” said Michele LeVoy of the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants. The impacts could be far-reaching, with people potentially hesitating to send children to school and more reluctant to access healthcare or report crimes committed against them.

“People will be, in a sense, terrified. Why would anyone want to go somewhere when they know that the main thing that will happen is not that they can get care, not that they can go to school, not that they can go to the library – they’ll just be turned in,” she said.

Professional associations have said the proposal could erode the trust they have worked to build and instead fuel racism and amplify stigmatisation.

LeVoy described the measures as part of a growing trend across Europe to criminalise solidarity with people who were undocumented. The Finnish government is also considering expanding obligations to report undocumented people, while in Germany, social welfare offices have for two decades wrestled with reporting obligations.

Another example lay in the measures introduced in the UK by Theresa May in 2012, said LeVoy, citing the “hostile environment” policies that sought to limit access to work, benefits, bank accounts, driving licences and other essential services for those who could not prove they had the legal right to live in Britain.

It later emerged that many who were in the UK legally were unable to prove their status and that the Home Office was frequently misclassifying legal residents as immigration offenders, leading the National Audit Office to conclude in 2018 that hostile environment policies did not provide value for money for taxpayers.

If the Swedish proposal were to become law, Sweden could end up grappling with similar consequences, said LeVoy. “Everywhere where obligations to denounce undocumented people have been applied, the result has been more discrimination, suffering and fear.”

Jacob Lind, a postdoctoral researcher in international migration at Malmö University, said the Swedish proposal was likely to have little impact when it came to reducing the number of people without papers in the country.

“A lot of people are not going to leave,” he said. “They’re just going to end up in further misery. You’ll end up with the opposite effect; society will have even less contact with people who are in this situation, further increasing their vulnerability and making them even more exploitable.”

It is a view that could explain the broad-based opposition to the plan; as of December 2023, more than 150 Swedish regions, municipalities, trade unions and other civil society groups had come out against the idea. “There’s a unique alliance right now around this issue and it’s become a key issue,” said Lind.

Among the groups that have spoken out is the Swedish Medical Association (SMA). “I became a doctor to help people, not monitor and report them,” said Sofia Rydgren Stale, the SMA chair.

For months, the association has argued that reporting requirements would run contrary to the professional ethics rules and principles that state that care must be provided as needed and that patients must not be discriminated against. “We see it as very likely that it will lead to people not daring to seek care for fear of being reported,” Rydgren Stale added.

The Swedish government said the committee looking into how this could become law was also examining whether the duty to provide information would conflict with professional values, such as within healthcare. “To ensure that the regulation is legally sound and does not result in unreasonable consequences for individuals, certain situations may need to be exempted from the duty to provide information,” the minister of migration, Maria Malmer Stenergard, said.

She described the reporting requirements as playing a key role in supporting legal migration by allowing the state to more efficiently deport individuals who are denied asylum. “Unfortunately, many remain and become part of a growing shadow society,” she said. “In such situations the duty to provide information helps in upholding government decisions and does not erode trust, quite the contrary.”

The government’s stance has seemingly done little to quell concerns. In May, the professional ethics council founded by two Swedish unions representing teachers said the obligation to report would put them in an impossible situation. “If the proposal were to become reality, it could lead to such serious ethical problems for teachers that our conclusion is that civil disobedience would probably be the only reasonable way out,” it said on its website.

The idea was also opposed by more than 90% of librarians, said Anna Troberg of the trade union DIK. “Many say they would rather lose their jobs than report those in need,” she said. “If the Swedish government advances this law, the librarians will come out on the right side of history. Ultimately, this is a question of trust, humanity and democracy.”

Source: Sweden’s ‘snitch law’ immigration plan prompts alarm across society

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RCMP had no idea about barbaric cultural practices snitch line pitched by Conservatives

2015/11/20 Leave a comment

No excuse for former Ministers Leitch and Alexander for going along with this. It would be nice to hear some sober second thought reflections from each of them:

CBC News has learned the RCMP had no idea a Conservative government would have tasked it with establishing a controversial “barbaric cultural practices” tipline.

Two former Conservative cabinet ministers held a news conference mid-campaign to tell reporters that if their party formed the next government, it would order Mounties to set up the snitch line.

Chris Alexander and Kellie Leitch said it would allow citizens to “report incidents of barbaric cultural practices here in Canada or to notify authorities that a child or woman is at risk of being victimized.”

The idea was criticized by some who pointed out such a tip line already exists — 911. Others jokingly predicted the Mounties could have found themselves investigating tips from the public that baby boys were being circumcised or that parents were getting their kids’ ears pierced.

CBC News asked the RCMP for all correspondence or other documentation related to such a proposal in an access to information request. The police force responded Wednesday.

The Mounties say they searched records in federal policing, specialized policing services, contract and aboriginal policing and the strategic policy and planning directory.

“Unfortunately, we were unable to locate records which respond to your request,” Supt. David Vautour, an officer with the access to information and privacy branch of the RCMP, wrote in a letter to CBC News.

This backs up what sources have recently told CBC News — that the idea for such a tip line was cooked up at the last minute by a small circle of people close to former prime minister and Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper with no consultation with anyone else.

Today, the Conservative Party’s Interim Leader Rona Ambrose told reporters, “I was not part of that decision, nor do I support it.”

Source: RCMP had no idea about barbaric cultural practices snitch line pitched by Conservatives – Politics – CBC News

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Robyn Urback and Barbara Kay on the backfiring of wedge politics

2015/10/22 Leave a comment

Two contrasting views in the details (niqab or snitch line), starting with Robyn Urback on the niqab):

And there, in the 905, was where the second profound impact of the niqab debate seemed to reverberate Monday night. The region, which was Conservative blue in 2011, switched to almost entirely red, except for the ridings of Vaughan and Markham-Unionville. The 905 had been, at one time, a symbol of Conservatives’ immigrant-outreach success, led by one-time minister of immigration, citizenship and multiculturalism Jason Kenney. When the Conservatives swept the region in 2011, taking almost all of the Liberals’ seats in York region, Kenney attributed his success to support from new Canadians. “Our appeal to them has been honest,” he said. “New Canadians increasingly realize that their values are Conservative values.”

Whereas in 2011 the Tories were talking to immigrant communities, in 2015 they were talking about them

Four years later, the Tories were singing a different tune, making a point of listing the ways in which immigrant values are incompatible with Canadian values. While the Liberals spoke about removing unnecessary barriers to immigration and accelerating family reunification, the Tories attacked the niqab, defended bottlenecks in Syrian refugee process and mused about launching a hotline to report “barbaric cultural practices.” Whereas in 2011 the Tories were talking to immigrant communities, in 2015 they were talking about them.

The 905 responded on Monday by giving the boot to many of its once-prominent Tories, including citizenship and immigration minister Chris Alexander, who lost by more than 10,000 votes. It became clear that while the Conservatives may have been correct in pegging the niqab as a wedge issue, they left themselves on the wrong side of it.

Certainly there were other factors at play in the last 78 days: the trial of Senator Mike Duffy, Mulcair’s flip-flopping on pipelines and free trade, Trudeau’s personal gregariousness and aspirational vision for the country. But in Quebec and the 905, two regions that arguably mattered most this election, the niqab — and discussions thereof — appeared to be the foremost factor to tip support away from the Tories, either directly, or by extension. It seems one or two people — specifically, two veiled women — really can make a difference.

Barbara Kay states it was the snitch line:

I think Harper’s big mistake was in taking discontent with the niqab for permission to go big on all culturally-rooted misogynist practices. His proposal for a tip line to report “barbaric cultural practices” like forced marriages to the RCMP was overkill, and struck a sour note, even amongst those Canadians – like me – who were his staunchest supporters for a face-cover ban.

No policy is more likely to make entire communities feel singled out as inherently suspicious than a snitch line

Face cover is a very specific, very public practice that is quite separate from “barbaric” cultural customs carried out in private. Face cover is more than the sum of its single part. As I have argued in many columns over the past few years, face cover is charged with so much negative political, ideological and cultural baggage, it does indeed cause “harm” to the social fabric. I firmly believe Quebec is abiding by a precautionary principle that is wise. Endorsing face cover in situations where the public has no option, and must deal with a covered representative of the government – nurse, policewoman, teacher, passport control officer – is to endorse a barbaric custom entirely at odds with the principles of openness and social reciprocity we take for granted as a social right, but which need protection. Harper recognized this wisdom, and that is where he should have stopped.

Don’t get me wrong. I am very troubled by practices like forced marriage, which is a retrograde, tribal custom that should have no place in our society. We know it is happening in certain cultural communities in Canada, and I applaud any government that tackles the problem.

But there was no pressing need to bring it up at this time, and no public incident that facilitated its organic emergence into public debate. Unlike the niqab, nobody from South Asia was demanding that the government recognize forced marriage as commensurate with Canadian values. And the “tip line” has odious Orwellian connotations to it. It had a seriously chilling effect, and did indeed seem to cast Harper’s “popular” niqab stance in the light of “populism,” even “ugly populism.”

The result was that people who quite defensibly resist face cover in the citizenship ceremony – or in the giving and getting of pubic services – now found themselves in the highly uncomfortable position of seeming to endorse Stasi-era tactics of social control. No strategy is more calculated to bring out racist mischief-makers and vengeful false allegers than a snitch line. No policy is more likely to make entire communities feel singled out as inherently suspicious than a snitch line. And no policy is more likely to make the party that proposes it look imperious, bullying and nativist.

The Conservatives blew it. They occupied what was perceived as the moral high ground by most Canadians, and then, thinking that was base camp rather than a distinctive summit, kept climbing into thin air. They ran out of oxygen, and deserved to.

Barbara Kay: It was the snitch line, not the niqab stance, that hurt Harper

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