High immigrant unemployment rate produces social problem in Sweden: experts

STOCKHOLM, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- High unemployment rate among the immigrants in Sweden sees the gap between the expectation of "heaven" and the reality of life in this northern Euporean country, Swedish experts said recently.

The statistics from the Swedish Immigration Board showed that about 15 percent of the population in Sweden are immigrates, amounting to approximately 1.4 millions out of the total population of nine millions. The largest groups of the immigrants in Sweden are originally from Iraq and Poland.

As people from the same background tend to form a relatively independent circle, immigrants tend to establish their own society with people from the same culture, which, however, has added more difficulty for their integration in the Swedish society, especially when they look for jobs. According to a report of the Swedish daily Dagen Nyheter, one third of immigrants from 19 to 24 years old were unemployed last year.

A survey from Statistics Sweden (SCB), involving 38 parts of Sweden with totally 4 percent of the Swedish population, showed that the higer percentage of immigrants in the place was, the lower employment rate there tended to be.

In a place called Rosengard of southern Sweden where immigrants took up over 90 percent of the local population, the employment rate was only about 35 percent while in Skonsberg of northern Sweden, with 20 percent of the people being immigrants, the employment rate reached 75 percent, the highest among all the places in the survey. Moreover, female immigrants would find it even harder to find jobs compared to males.

A main reason can be the lack of higher education for the immigrants. "It was a test for both teenagers and adults to come from another country not having the same background and education," the Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told reporters.