The unlikely report from the SOM Institute is presented in the same week as raving immigrant-related frauds in social entitlements come to light. The same week the miniscule employment rates and the rampant misapprotiation of benefits among newcomers have been exposed. Accordingly, signs are that SVT is misinterpreting the signals from the SOM institute, in their eagerness to find good news in relation to the one-world policies that both institutions propagate.
The immigration lobby oversees the immigration
Since the immigrant minority of Sweden has grown exponentially during the last decades, since the SOM report contains considerable methodological errors and since we know that immigrants are more positive to immigration than Swedes, the share of respondents who are negative to further immigration would have had to fall quite much more than it has, in order for SVT:s conclusion, that Swedes actually become less negative to immigration for every year that passes, to be correct.
Between 2002 and 2011 the immigrant portion of the country's population has risen more that the resistance towards immigration has decreased. The immigrant community, according to SCB (the state statistics agency) was 15% in 2002. In 2011, it was 20%. Resistance towards immigration, according to SOM decreased from 50% to 41% during the same period.
Systemetic misinterpretation and flawed methodology
The reports of the SOM Institute are not only misinterpreted by media and politics. The reports themselves are skewed in order to present Swedes as happier about immigration than they actually are.
1. The comments of the institute manager, Marie Demker, demonstrate that the poll survey is a measure of the popular attitude to immigration as a whole. The repeated references to Sverigedemokraterna imply that the survey is relevant primarily to the type of immigration that this party opposes, i.e. unidentified migrants without proper refugee status plus their families. Nevertheless, the poll questions refer only to "refugees" - a category of immigrants which is considerably more welcome among respondents.
2. It is well known that any third-world immigrant population practices a high degree of block voting, in favor of parties with generous immigration and entitlement policies. (The dominance of Swedish Social Democrats in the country's immigrant districts and the debate in relation to Dutch elections are good indicators of this - certainly more such can be found.) Therefore, the size of the immigrant population is relevant when interpreting a report like the one discussed. But the quantification of this population is difficult, since the otherwise all-seeing SCB is not at all helpful in this respect. Since 2003 they refuse to publish the number of persons who have one foreign-born parent. Since they, mistakenly, actually did publish this "secret" figure for the year 2011 we now know that the number of people, of whom most can be presumed to identify themselves with the immigrant population, but who since 2003 have vanished from official statistics, has well surpassed 600'000. An analysis by statistics blogger Affe indicates that this concealed part of the immigrant population grows faster than the number of "official" immigrants.
3. One further sign indicates that a rising proportion of those counted as Swedes are actually immigrants: The reproduction numbers. According to an OECD report, a veritable pram war is being lost by the host peoples of six European countries. In the case of Sweden this manifests itself in that the low reproduction figures among Swedish citizens are starting to rise, up towards the high reproduction figures of non-Swedish citizens. The explanation is not that Swedes have become more optimistic regarding the future for Swedish children. The explanation is that foreigners i Sweden (and the other five European countries) now choose to retain the culture and child-rearing patterns of their homelands for many years and several generations after moving north.
4. The only instance were Swedes have voted on immigration (actually on the reception of refugees) was 1988 in the city of Sjöbo. The result devastated the immigration lobby - 65% voted no. The general manager of SIFO (the state institute for opinion polls) at the time dismissed suggestions by reporters that Sjöbo would be extraordinary in any way. He laid bare that he would expect the same referendum result anywhere in Sweden. In November 2011 the pollster YouGov asked the voters, regardless of their party preference, to name the party with the best immigration policies. 69% named Sverigedemokraterna. To summarize, obvious facts lead to the conclusion that the SOM Institute, led by the previous Communist Marie Demker, must be questioned in its capacity of a reliable supplier of statistics. Professor Demker, who triumphantly relates her reports to the party Sverigedemokraterna and who dismisses what is nearly half of the population of the country as a "group", is lacking of the scientific objectivity one should expect from the leader of a reliable public institute.
A group to be reckoned with
According to SVT, the opinions of the immigration-critical "group" is coherent. "They want to reduce immigration, they see immigrants as a threat and as people about whom the media is not telling the truth." Professor Demker raises her concern that "The group is a source of support for Sverigedemokraterna".
