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Visa Fraud Is Rampant Among Foreign Students in Sweden, Says New Report

June 26, 2011, 6:03 pm

Thousands of foreigners are abusing Sweden’s student-visa system by entering the country as students but not attending classes, according to the site The Local, which cites a new report from the Swedish Migration Board. The report “suggests that up to one-third of students who are granted resident visas in Sweden do not show up for class,” says The Local.

Around 15,000 people are granted one-year residency permits as students each year in Sweden, but until this year, they faced few checks to make sure they were actually attending college. Previously, in addition to paying an application fee of around $1,000, all applicants needed was a letter of admission from a higher-education institution and proof that they had enough money to survive while they were in the country.

Beginning this autumn, students from outside the European Union, the European Economic Area, and Switzerland will be charged tuition at Swedish universities, which remain free to all others, and a new system will go into effect requiring institutions to report students who don’t show up for class to the migration board.

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  • rsgassle

    Reread your recent history. From 1945 to 1983 the deficit as a % of GDP fell consistently, even under liberal presidents. Only under the conservative Ronald Reagan did that trend reverse itself, and then again under the conservative Bush II. 

  • James Stagg

    Bush’s adversaries (and they are legion) will continue to demonize him, just like the Demo’s did to Lincoln.  Then someone like BO comes along and claims ole Abe for himself, and suddenly, “everything is okay; Abe is one of the ‘great’ ones.”

    Grow up, you guys, and stop passing illiterate judgments before you actually have the facts.  When you do, you will see your Messiah, the great BO, uses ALL of the methods GWB did, but gets NO criticism for it, not even killing American citizens, which even GWB was not accused of doing.  And you call yourselves “historians” and “objective”.  Just “goofy” in your arguments will suffice.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KQ5AHUMCV2YCEDMVZCZJVJWVNI spidey_man

    William Shirer, author of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” starts his Forward by appologizing to his fellow historians for writing a historical view of the Third Reich only 15 years after its demise. Fifty years ago it was thought to write history with less than 30 to 40 years to be able to completely document and understand an era was to be a rush to judgment. 

    The modern era, with the illusion of massive amounts of information, lives under the possibly flawed assumption that everything you need to know about anything is available immediately.  With more information however comes the fog of disinformation.  We live in a 24/7 news cycle where red-light bulletins are measured in seconds, and the need to be first overrides the need to be right.

    The final story on W, like Harry Truman, will be when misinformation is omitted and information is contempleted, and we are far enough away from the canvas to see the entire painting. 

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KQ5AHUMCV2YCEDMVZCZJVJWVNI spidey_man

    Respectfully, we have never had a surplus.  The three years you mention were balanced on the surplus of Social Security collections, which both politicians and citizens both agree are for the payment of Social Security benefits.  The closest we got was in 1998, when without the SS payments we had a deficit of around 150 billion.

    The greatest political failure, which can be abscribed to both Democrats and Republicans, was using this surplus to mask the greater failure the United States has had in balancing its budget. 

  • tom27

    I hope none of the anti-Bush commentators below are academics, because their remarks, particularly on Bush’s invasion of Iraq, display a painful ignorance. In 2008, the first compilation of translations from Saddam’s secret police showed a level of involvement with world terrorism which justified the invasion of Iraq far more than an invasion of Afghanistan. Saddam funded, supplied and trained most of the terror networks throughout the world, including affiliates of Al Qaeda. Typically, The New York Times devoted two paragraphs in the back pages to the story but they didn’t refute the facts of the findings.

    Afghanistan was merely Osama’s landlord, charging rent to allow him to stay. Iraq was using his oil money to keep terrorist entities alive throughout the world. When doing battle with a stateless enemy, controlling real estate is less important than going after the bankers. 

    We have stupidly abandoned Iraq too early, possibly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and certainly making any reaction to Iranian nuclear weaponry – whether a peaceful or belligerent reaction – infinitely more difficult. Meanwhile, we will stay mired in Afghanistan uselessly, spending blood and treasure just to prop up the election chances of the current occupant of the White House.

    The stupidity of the political and media elites is the direct result of America’s academic elites. America produces the stupidest smart people in the world. It doesn’t have to be that way.

  • Synopticist

    In foreign policy terms, the period 2000-2008 would be best desribed as “the Vice-Presidency of Dick Cheney”.
     There was a week (i think) in 2004, when things were slipping out of control in Iraq, we Brits sent a high powered delegation to Washington to try to get some sort of grip over events on the ground. This was supposedly highly planned and co-ordinated. Tony Blair sat on George. The British foreing secretary spoke to Colin Powell,( or Maybe it was Rice) the defence secretatry to Donald Rumsfeld (?), the MI6 bloke spoke to the head of the CIA. They thought they’d covered all the bases.The delegation left, extremelly satisfied, thinking they’d got what they wanted, more decisive, political coalition control over the slowly unfolding chaos in Iraq.

    A few weeks went by, and the US annouced a totally different policy to the one Tony Blair thought he’d squared with Bush. It was described as “coming from a completelly unexpected direction.” It was Cheney who had made the key decision, and he’d been basically ignored by the Brits.

     These guys were top British politicians and intel people. They thought they truly understood US politics, and in a sense they were right. Had it been Obama, Clinton, Bush the Elder, Reagan or even Carter, there was no way a highly powered delegation, on a matter of such foeign policy  importance, would have needed to speak to Mr Vice. Why bother with a pitcher of warm spit?

    But this was President  ”W”, and he wasn’t the guy who made Iraqi policy..

    Now i cant remember all the details of this visit, or even the year it took place, but i’m sure the author of this book knows the event i’m referring to.

     Bush wasn’t stupid, or particularly wicked, but he was LAZY,and that meant he gave his subordinates too much power. Cheney over foreign affairs and taxes, Rove over domestic policy, Rumsfeld in Iraq, ( not to mention Paul Bremer, what a lightwieght), FEMA, the SEC, the list goes on. Delegation is one thing, but it was Bush who had the ultimate responsibility for the poor decisions made by his delegates, and to be a great leader, you need the grit and determination to steer them in the right direction, and the grip to keep them there.

    The relentless demamds of a high powered political job in the 21st century are like little else. 
      Bush just wasn’t willing to keep his nose to the grindstone, put in the hard hours, and just WORK DAM**D HARD for 8 years. How can a guy spend 3 months on the ranch every year, and go to bed at 9.pm, while still being a great President?

  • jsibelius

    I won’t necessarily disagree with you about transfer of power, but I will vehemently disagree with you about LAZY.  Maybe it was possible once upon a time, but certainly not in the past 50 years.  The president does not get vacations and he does not get days off.  Even when he spent long stretches at his ranch, he was working.  He got daily briefings, signed off on various things that needed it.  Most of us mortals can take a vacation and actually shut off work.  The president never gets that option.  And I wonder how many times he got called back into work at 2 a.m. over a “situation.”  Compare – how often does that happen to you? (IT people and emergency services – we know, and we appreciate you for it!)

    Couple that with the fact that Bush was a recovering alcoholic, and I’d say trying to de-stress was vital to his ability to do his job.  If that means a 9 pm bedtime and extensive – what do you call them? – “vacations,” I say sweet dreams and happy trails.  Eight years in office and we are still here.  We didn’t implode and we didn’t fall off the planet.  Time to move on.

  • stefanstackhouse

    I don’t know if W was the absolute worst President, but he has clearly earned a place in the bottom tier.

    I was suckered once by the lies about a “humble foreign policy” and “compassionate conservativism”, but I sure wasn’t suckered twice. The man was an absolute disaster for the nation, and I don’t know if we’ll ever recover from the damage he caused.

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