Sweden Feels the Refugee Strain

Sweden, which considers itself a humanitarian superpower, has long welcomed refugees, whether they be Jews escaping the Holocaust or victims of civil wars and natural disasters. Some 16 percent of its population is foreign-born, well above the U.S. figure of 13 percent. Since the 1990s the Scandinavian nation of 9.6 million has absorbed hundreds of thousands of migrants from the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Still, Swedes have never experienced anything like the current influx. Some 360,000 refugees—mainly from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria—are expected to enter the country in 2015 and 2016, on top of the 75,000 who sought asylum last year. It’s as if North Carolina, which has about the same population as Sweden, sprouted a new city the size of Raleigh in three years.