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Thousands of refugees are fleeing Syria for Sweden. Photo: TT

After the nationalist Sweden Democrat party called for Sweden's snap election to be a 'referendum on immigration', a group of veteran politicians has called on the nation's other political groups to engage in debates about refugee numbers or risk losing votes.

Writing in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, four politicians from Sweden's conservative Christian Democrat and Centre parties said that while the Sweden Democrats were wrong to call for immigration to be cut by up to 90 percent in Sweden, the country's immigration and integration strategies deserved a more openly critical discussion.

Currently none of Sweden's centre-right or centre-left parties are against the country's liberal immigration laws, which have resulted in the country taking in more refugees per capita than any other nation in the EU.

All of the mainstream parties have so far refused to enter into immigration discussions with the Sweden Democrats - a group with Nazi roots that has sought to establish itself as a populist party and scored almost 13 percent of the vote in September's general election. It is now the third largest political group in parliament.

"To categorically ignore the Sweden Democrats' presence in parliament is to give them a populist free ticket instead of fighting their xenophobia," the former politicians wrote in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter on Friday. "We believe that the parties should be able to converse with the Sweden Democrats."

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Immigration debate intensifies in Sweden