Sweden’s “net emigration” is the result of a delay in the tax authority deregistering citizens leaving the country and should not be understood to mean that migrants are now leaving the country in greater numbers than they are arriving, according to an anti-migration media outlet. Samnytt.

The figures presented by the Moderate-led government, which we reported on last week, come from Statistics Sweden, the national statistics agency. Although these figures show net emigration for the first five months of the year, this does not mean that more people emigrated than immigrated. Statistic Sweden’s press officer Johannes Cleris said Samnytt that the Swedish Tax Agency has been working since last summer to clean up its population register in order to deregister people who are falsely registered in the country.

According to Statistics Sweden, 36,000 people emigrated from Sweden in the first five months of this year, giving the country – on paper – a net emigration of 5,672 people. But that is not the whole story. Samnytt says.

“This cleanup work that the Swedish Tax Agency is doing in the registers is affecting the emigration figures, but we do not know by how much. You have to ask the Tax Agency about that,” Cleris told the news agency, adding: “Our expert has previously said that emigration is probably lower than the figures indicate.”

From May 2023 to June 26, 2024, the tax agency deregistered 18,695 people, who according to department head Cajsa Toresten are “people who were registered here but have already returned to their home country” without notifying the authorities. She said that as part of the agency’s cleanup, 7,000 people have been deregistered since the beginning of the year – about 1,000 every month. Looking at the figures presented by the government, this would negate the “net emigration” because these people had already left Sweden and were just not registered as no longer resident in the country.

“Although Sweden has a relatively low net immigration, in reality more people still immigrate to Sweden than leave the country,” Samnytt concludes