In this week’s Inside Sweden, Nordic Editor Richard Orange looks at whether the government’s proposal to revoke permanent residence permits is too politically risky to push through before the election — and then breaks down the week’s stories.
It was interesting this week to see Fredrik Kärrholm, the Moderate Party MP and former police officer, out defending a government inquiry’s proposal to revoke permanent residency for well over 100,000 foreigners in Sweden, although “defending” is perhaps the wrong word, because Kärrholm hardly defended it at all.
He stressed in a debate on the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper’s daily podcast that the government had still not committed to pushing ahead with the proposal and admitted that the estimated six billion kronor cost of reassessing the cases was “an enormous amount of money” and “a significant issue”.
As we reported this week, it now looks like the government has decided not to put a bill forward to do this before the election, as the proposal has not made the list of bills to be published before the summer.
Kärrholm did, however, try out various ways of defending it.
The inquiry, he said, had concluded that there was no fundamental legal principle in Sweden forbidding this kind of retroactive legislation. His debating opponent, the Centre Party MP Niels Paarup-Peterson, hit back that the legal bodies that responded in the consultation had all questioned this. The inquiry’s chair who came to this conclusion, he added, was a former official for the far-right Sweden Democrats.
The main goal of the inquiry, Kärrholm said, was to make people with permanent residency citizens instead, going on to suggest that people with permanent residency had somehow chosen not to be citizens. “If you don’t want to be a part of the nation of Sweden, then maybe you shouldn’t actually carry on living in Sweden.”
The government’s underlying principle, he added, was that foreigners who follow the law and can support themselves should be able to stay in the country, and those who don’t should not.
Paarup-Peterson hit back that this principle was not being followed, as existing reforms were already seeing “masses” of well-established foreigners with permanent jobs deported. Few listeners, he said, would believe Kärrholm’s claim that the Sweden Democrats wanted to spend six billion kronor to make more foreigners Swedish citizens. The real aim, he said, was “to deport people”.
As Kärrholm made his arguments, it almost seemed like an experiment: that the Moderate Party wanted to hold Migration Minister Johan Forssell back and test whether Kärrholm, an up-and-coming MP who is one of its sharpest debaters, was better able to defend the proposal, which has been heavily criticised or rejected by every single agency asked for an opinion.
Paarup-Peterson told me after the debate that he thought that the government was still assessing whether the proposal would fly in the election.
“They’re partly looking at ‘is this really reasonable?’, based on the issues we’ve discussed, but then the other part is whether it’ll be a good discussion in an election. It would be difficult for them. I’m not sure they’ll come to the conclusion that it would be a good thing. For the Liberal Party it definitely wouldn’t be. Even the Social Democrats are against this and they’ve said ‘yes’ to everything. So that makes it a gamble.”
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Migration news
Our freelancer Mandy Pipher broke an exclusive story on how the Migration Agency has suddenly started regularly refusing permits to high school students on exchange programmes, with the agencies arranging the programmes comparing the bureaucratic hassles to those they have experienced dealing with Russia and Poland.
We looked at how the Swedish media has stepped up its coverage of people being deported due to higher work permit salary thresholds and the abolition of the track change law, and how this pushed even Deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch to open up for adjusting the law to allow employed, hard-working people to stay. You can hear Becky and James talk about the shift in this week’s Sweden in Focus podcast.
We also reported on an interview where Maria Mindhammar, the Director General of the Migration Agency, said the government inquiry had “massively underestimated” the cost of revoking permanent residencies.
Johan Britz, Sweden’s Labour market minister, who represents the Liberal Party, has called for a new government agency specifically for handling work permit applications and at the same time warned that the government’s harsh immigration rhetoric is deterring highly skilled workers.
Finally, we examined whether British dual nationals will really be forced to have a valid UK passport to travel into the country from next month.
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What else have we been reporting on?
It’s time for our ‘What changes’ article, telling you all of the most important things set to happen next month, with the Winter Olympics, Sportlov skiing holiday, and the arrival of pension envelopes top of the list.
Becky updated our article on how much it will cost you to take your family to one of Sweden’s ski resorts for a week and how to save money on it, if you decide that “When in Sweden”, you should act like the Swedes.
For us down here in Skåne, the most exciting thing this week was the appearance of the Northern Lights on Monday and Tuesday. Readers sent in some spectacular photographs showing vivid reds and greens as far south as Malmö. Thanks to everyone who contributed.
We also heard from readers about what Swedish food habits they’ve adopted, which revealed a, to me surprising, appreciation of foods like meatballs, Kalles kaviar and fish paste from foreigners from places like India and Chile.
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Finally, we obviously covered the aftermath of US President Trump’s announcement that he would impose an additional 10 percent tariff on Sweden as punishment for sending troops to Greenland in solidarity with Denmark.
We explained the EU’s Big Bazooka trade weapon and analysed how “Trump-proof” Sweden’s economy actually is, and heard from Americans in Sweden about how the way Swedes treat them has changed as a result of the threat.
We’ve got another survey out at the moment, asking people employed by the Swedish tech giant Ericsson about how they have been impacted by the layoffs announced earlier this month. If you’re affected, or might be, please fill in our survey here.
Have a lovely weekend!
Richard