The last four years have seen a dramatic tightening of immigration law, with stricter requirements for citizenship, work permits, and family reunification brought in as part of the Tidö government's paradigm shift on migration.
In 2022, the centre-right Moderates agreed to take a hard line on migration and crime in exchange for the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats.
Tidö has also been criticised for so-called “teenage deportations”. Under the previous rules, tougher migration guidelines meant that children of migrants or foreign workers were legally considered adults at 18, losing any residency rights connected to their parents.
While the government announced an agreement in June 2026 to extend this dependency age limit to 21, opposition parties like the Centre Party argue the fix is only a temporary band-aid that shifts the threat from 18-year-olds to 21-year-olds.
“We want to see a break from the unreasonable deportations, when it comes to teenagers, when it comes to labour immigration, when it comes to the new infant deportations that the government has now introduced,” the party’s migration policy spokesperson Niels Paarup-Petersen told Swedish broadcaster TV4's Nyheterna news programme ahead of the election.
Immediately after a new government has been formed, a clear signal must be sent to the Migration Board that “we are going to change the regulations here,” he said.
He explained that the freeze would apply to Brexit deportations, teenage deportations, labour deportations under the salary requirement, the "track-change" rules and infant deportations.
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“The entire opposition already agrees that the regulations should be changed in all these areas,” he said.
If a new government says it will change the rules so that more people can be allowed to stay, then the Migration Board can voluntarily choose to freeze the deportations until they know what the new regulations will be, Paarup-Petersen explained.
But if the Sweden Democrats are in government, the "completely insane deportations" will continue, he said, adding that the deportation policy of “people who work, contribute, take care of themselves, study and have children” would only be strengthened with this government.
However, Migration Minister Johan Forssell (of the Moderates) believes that the Centre Party is trying to raise an outdated issue.
"The Centre Party is trying to create a political conflict where we agree – no one wants teenage deportations. It is not credible for them to level criticism now when they themselves have had several years to solve the problem in government," Forssell wrote to TV4. The Centre Party was a formal support party that co-steered policy under the previous Social Democrat-led government.
The Centre Party has already announced some changes it would like to make: it wants the number of quota refugees to increase from 900 to 5,000 per year and to reintroduce the possibility for refugees to stay in Sweden due to "particularly painful circumstances."
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