Sweden has changed its constitution to allow the citizenship of dual nationals to be revoked if they are convicted of serious crimes.
The country’s parliament voted 292 to 51 in favour of the amendment, with only the Left Party and the Green Party opposing the move.
The constitutional change makes it possible for the government to introduce laws removing the Swedish nationality of dual citizens who either obtain their citizenship fraudulently, or commit crimes that hurt the country’s “vital interests”.
The outgoing centre-right government, aided by the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats, has been working on a yet-to-be completed bill to determine which crimes could result in citizenship revocation, The Local and AFP reported.
Deep public concerns about mass immigration and crime in Sweden, which now has more fatal shootings per capita than any other country in Western Europe, has resulted in a shift in migration policy and a series of new measures to crack down on foreign criminals and gangs.
The Swedish prison population doubled over the past decade, and the country has been rocked by a series of horrific rape and gang rape cases in recent years involving perpetrators of Middle Eastern and African descent.
But immigrant groups and left-wing civil rights organisations criticised the constitutional change ahead of the vote, claiming it would “create two types of Swedish citizenship: one that is robust and one that is weak and conditional”.
The vote comes amid weeks of political deadlock following the September election, where the centre-left Social Democrats won a slim majority thanks to overwhelming support from voters with a non-European background, many of whom were recently given citizenship.
Both Social Democrats leader Magdalena Andersson and caretaker Prime Minister Ulf Kirstersson have failed to win support from the Centre Party in order to from government, and if neither side can make a deal the country will go to another election within three months.
Header image: A Sweden Day event in Malmo (Instagram).
