Every time there is an unusually stupid decision made by our immigration courts, the swedish minister of migration Tobias Billström (M) is held accountable in Parliament or in the media. The answer is usually goes something like this: As a minister, I can not interfere with individual cases.
In a way, Billström is quite right. It is not within the mandate of the immigration minister or the government to review the decisions of our courts. The parliament decides the laws, usually on initiative of the Government. But it is the courts who determine how they are interpreted in each case. That is the division of power and nothing to change as such.
So every time the Migration Court makes very strange interpretations of the Aliens Act (for example, that there is no armed conflict in Afghanistan) it’s easy for Billström to reason like this: I don´t interpret the law, so it’s not my problem .
But it certainly is your problem, Billström! If the Aliens Act, in the interpretation of the Migration Court, gives the wrong result there is an obvious way to solve it: clarify the law so that it no longer can be interpreted incorrectly. And that is a job for a minister of migration: Submit a proposal to parliament with the necessary changes, so that the Aliens Act can no longer be misunderstood, even by the Migration Court.
Johan Zandin, board member of the Left Party’s Fristadsfonden (Refugee Sanctuary Foundation) and activist in No one is illegal Gothenburg