The Local Sweden’s Deputy Editor Becky Waterton reflects on the community of citizenship applicants before running through the other stories The Local has covered this week.
We held a live comment-based Q&A on Sweden’s plans to tighten up citizenship rules on the site on Friday, which is something we haven’t done before. We got more than 85 comments, which I’m pretty sure is the most we’ve ever had on an article, and despite the frantic hour we spent answering as many as we could I think the whole team – me, our Nordic Editor Richard Orange and our contributor Mandy Pipher – would consider it a success.
As someone directly affected by the new planned changes to citizenship, I also found it strangely comforting. Sometimes the process of navigating migration policy can feel quite lonely. Maybe you discuss your application with your family or a few friends, but you might not know that many people who are in the same boat as you. In my case, I don’t have many non-Swedish friends in Sweden, other than colleagues here at The Local.
This Q&A, however, really did make me feel like part of a community of other citizenship applicants. Sure, I wish we were meeting under different circumstances, but I really appreciated the fact that there were so many other people who had the same worries, questions and frustrations as me, and there was something special about talking to so many of you directly in real time, which you don’t quite get in the same way as you do, say, replying to emails.
I hope that The Local can be that community for you, our readers, too.
It’s also nice to know that whatever happens to my own citizenship application there’s a group of people who are all going through the same thing, who you can commiserate with and who celebrate each other when someone, somewhere is lucky enough to get a message that their application has been approved.
It made me think of a nice Swedish saying – delad glädje är dubbel glädje, och delad sorg är halv sorg, or in English: shared joy is double joy, and shared sorrow is halved sorrow.
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Other migration news
The Swedish government has posted the proposed text of a new law changing the rules for citizenship, set to come into force on June 6th ‒ and there are no transitional rules, meaning that people who apply before then could be assessed under the new requirements.
The Swedish Migration Agency (Migrationsverket) looks set to significantly narrow the list of occupations proposed for exemption from the government’s new salary requirement for labour migrants, with around 60 job titles currently on a provisional list.
When Sweden’s government mounted its strategic retreat on migration last week, the headlines were all about teen deportations. But they also agreed to postpone their most controversial proposal of all: revoking existing permanent residency permits.
The Migration Agency has explained the thinking behind its decision to pause rejections in certain cases involving young adults after the government and the Sweden Democrats announced a U-turn on so-called ‘teen deportations’.
Readers of The Local have given the government’s deportation U-turn a cautious welcome, although several expressed anger that it had taken so long to act and a few questioned how many people facing deportation would be allowed to stay.
Abhijith Nag Balasubramanya’s circular-system hydroponics startup was already providing locally-grown produce to a major grocery store in Skellefteå, northern Sweden, when his business visa was denied by the Swedish Migration Agency. He has now left Sweden.
Demonstrations against the government’s migration laws are planned in nearly 30 different locations across Sweden this weekend. Here’s how you can join.
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What else did we cover?
Both Swedish citizens and registered foreign residents of Sweden will be eligible for the planned government-issued electronic identification and verification service, which is currently being developed by the Swedish Police Agency.
A tax rebate, cheaper food and even a potential pay rise ‒ April looks like it could be a good month financially for many people in Sweden.
Sweden’s Consumer Agency estimates a monthly food cost of 2,700 kronor for a single adult or 8,440 kronor for two adults and two children, but how can you lower that? Here are our top tips.
It’s easy to feel isolated from the political process, especially as a foreigner living in another country. But even if you’re not a Swedish citizen, it’s still possible for you to influence politics here.
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Scandinavian airlines SAS and Norwegian are introducing “temporary” price increases due to soaring oil prices triggered by the war in the Middle East.
Sweden’s GDP saw an unexpected drop in January, falling 1.1 percent compared to the previous month, according to preliminary figures from Statistics Sweden.
Right-wing extremist ideology is gaining ground among youths in Sweden owing in part to social media and its algorithms, with primarily boys and young men openly spreading antisemitic memes and hatred online, anti-racism watchdog Expo said on Tuesday.
Thanks for reading,
Becky Waterton
Deputy Editor, The Local Sweden
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