Sweden’s Open Door Policy Is Swinging Shut : Immigration: Country is tightening its rules allowing political asylum. New law would allow a ceiling on the number of refugees.

Sweden is closing the open door that made it a refuge for everyone from American draft dodgers to African victims of torture, but it will leave the door ajar.

The Social Democratic government has introduced legislation to restrict asylum that reflects political changes abroad and budgetary problems at home. The bill is expected to pass this month.

It would end the virtually automatic right to asylum for anyone in a war situation, including defecting soldiers and young men at risk of conscription.

When the Persian Gulf War began, the Foreign Ministry reflected the new attitude by announcing that it would not grant asylum to American soldiers trying to escape duty in Kuwait or Iraq.

Sweden, with a population of 8.5 million, has taken in about 189,000 refugees in 20 years at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. The largest single group was from Iran.

Opposition to the refugees has grown and, for the first time, a party with a clear anti-immigration platform plans to contest the general election in September.

“Last year was a bad year,” said Peter Nobel, a government ombudsman for ethnic discrimination. “It started with racist propaganda and a wave of crimes directed against immigrants. There was a lot of violence also against refugee centers.”

The new law would permit a ceiling to be put on the number of refugees. No figure has been chosen, but the 29,700 places for refugees at camps amounts to a technical limit.

Language in the bill narrows the definition of political refugees to that of the Geneva Conventions but leaves room for asylum-seekers who “especially warrant protection” or whose rejection “clearly would conflict with humanitarian demands.”

According to the conventions, a refugee is someone with a well-founded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group or political views.

The government bill links refugee policy and foreign aid in an effort to discourage people from fleeing countries in turmoil.

“Many people don’t escape political persecution but war, poverty and social disturbances,” said Vivi Samuelsson, a Labor Ministry official. “They don’t qualify as refugees under the Geneva Conventions and should be able to see their hope and future at home.”

In the past, it was easy for Eastern Europeans to qualify for asylum in Sweden on humanitarian grounds if not political. Immigration authorities began operating under emergency rules in December, 1989, however, after ethnic Turks from Bulgaria overloaded the system.

About 80% of the 5,000 ethnic Turks who arrived in the last months of 1989 were told to go home. The emergency rules remain in effect and are being used to refuse most requests for asylum.

Fewer than 30% of asylum seekers were turned away in 1989, but the number grew to 60% last year.

Members of Parliament from the Liberal Party, Environmental Party and Left Party, as the Communist Party now is known, object to converting emergency regulations into law. They say the restrictions are too tight and the exceptions too vague.

Because of the criticism, the Immigration Board will publish its first guidelines on eligibility. It is trimming its bureaucracy and speeding decisions and plans to close most of the 140 refugee camps in order to reduce the 29,700 refugee spaces to 7,000 by July, 1993.

Last year, 29,000 people requested asylum in Sweden, but only 1,400 applied in January, 1991, down from 3,700 the previous January.

Most refugees live in barracks-like accommodations with all modern amenities. The Stockholm city authorities try to have them integrated into society in 18 months, including help finding jobs.

Each place at a camp is costs the government about $40 a day, plus such related costs as health services, schools and police.

“For a number of years we had more people entering the system than exiting” into society, Samuelsson said. Cities could not provide enough jobs and housing, she said, and about 100 refugees lived in a tent camp in southern Sweden from March through June, 1990.

“My conclusion is that they have decided to decrease immigration and need an excuse,” said Per Stadig, a lawyer for refugees. “Authorities point to the decision about (Geneva) Convention refugees, but people who would have passed as that a few years ago do not pass as that today.”