This article examines how the Swedish Government in 2021 justified weakening the right to asylum through the language of human rights. Focusing on legislative changes that replaced permanent residence permits with temporary ones, the article explores the contradiction between claiming to protect the right to asylum while simultaneously restricting it. Using a discourse-historical approach, the study analyses how Sweden’s historical human rights discourse was invoked to legitimise new migration policies that stand in tension with established understandings of asylum as a universal right under international law.