STOCKHOLM — (CNN) Sweden’s interior minister said that his country is preparing to expel 80,000 asylum seekers over the course of the next year, according to media reports.
However, his press secretary, Victor Harju, told CNN not to put too much stock in those figures. He called them vague, hypothetical estimates based on last year’s numbers.
The Swedish government received about 163,000 applications from asylum seekers this year. On average, about 45% get rejected, Harju said, which adds up to about the 80,000 figure cited by the interior minister.
That’s a bit higher than the European Union’s acceptance rate, in which 45% of those applying for asylum for the first time (so-called first instance asylum decisions) received “positive outcomes.”
The comments come as refugees are still heading toward Europe in large numbers, with fatalities commonplace on the perilous journey.
At least 24 people — 10 of them children — drowned in the Mediterranean Sea between Turkey and Greece after their boat capsized Wednesday evening, a Greek coast guard representative told CNN.
Forty-five people were on the boat when it sank.
Meanwhile, anti-immigration sentiment continues to rise throughout Europe, spurred in part by reports of mass sex assaults committed on New Year’s Eve in Cologne and other German cities that may have been carried out by migrants.
British Prime Minister David Cameron came under fire Wednesday for his own comments about “a bunch of migrants” during a session of Parliament.
On Thursday, the UK Home Office announced that it will take in more unaccompanied child refugees from Syria and other conflict regions, though it’s not clear how many.
It will be up to the United Nations to identify “several hundred children” to be resettled in the UK, in addition to the country’s pre-existing commitment to settle 20,000 refugees from camps near Syria.
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