SHARE
COPY LINK

WORK PERMITS

Swedish nail salons selling ‘work permits’

Several nail salons in Sweden have been found selling illegal work permits to Vietnamese jobseekers for as much as 140,000 kronor ($22,000) according to a new investigation.

Swedish nail salons selling 'work permits'

The findings were revealed on the Kaliber programme on Swedish Radio (SR) P1 who posed as Vietnamese people eager to find work in Sweden. They rang eight nail salons across the country enquiring about what was needed in order to find work plus what wages they could expect.

Out of those eight salons, four said they would be interested but would require vast sums of money in order to provide the fake work permit. Prices ranged from 70,000 to 140,000 kronor with a salary of 6,500 kronor ($1000) per month.

Only the Swedish migration board (migrationsverket) can issue work permits to jobseekers. The findings by SR P1 came as a shock to Fredrik Martinsson, a lawyer with the migration board.

“Yes, it’s very serious because in my view as it puts out an idea that you can abuse the legislation,” he told SR P1.

The investigation found that Swedish migration board have issued a total of 80 work permits in the last three years for people who have come to Sweden to work in a nail salon.

If you don’t work full-time then there is a requirement by the migration board that the jobseekers earns a minimum of 13,000 kronor a month. The four nail salons exposed by SR P1 were offering 6,500 per month plus free accommodation.

“The most important thing is that we require a sum of money,” replied one of the salons when quizzed about finding a spot for a Vietnamese jobseeker.

The migration board have said they will follow up on the findings but due to the current laws are unable to impose sanctions on the nail salons.

The Local/pr

Follow The Local on Twitter

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

WORKING IN SWEDEN

Swedish Migration Agency launches new system for handling work permits

The Migration Agency will roll out a new processing model for work permits on January 29th, which should, among other things, speed up waiting times for international talent.

Swedish Migration Agency launches new system for handling work permits

“The new way of working aims to make it easier for companies to quickly obtain the labour they need,” Maria Mindhammar, director-general of the Swedish Migration Agency, wrote in a statement.

“To succeed, we need to concentrate our efforts and focus our service offerings where they are needed most – early in the process and in a way that is highly responsive to employers’ individual needs.”

From January 29th, the agency will prioritise service to employers recruiting highly qualified workers. It will do this by introducing a new way of sorting applications for permits, filtering by occupation and industry and sorting out applications which are ready for a decision, which, it claims, will also make it possible to cut processing times drastically.

IN NUMBERS:

It will do this by dividing work permit applications into four categories, ranked from A-D, of which only the first, Category A, will be handled by the new international recruitment units, with a new maximum processing time of just 30 days.

Category A applications will be those already classified as “highly qualified” under the Standard for Swedish Classification of Occupations (SSYK), and will include leadership roles, roles requiring higher university education, and roles requiring university education or equivalent.

In addition to this, the agency will offer a new service to employers handling highly-qualified workers, through help via phone, email, and potentially also in-person meetings, as well as extra support to major projects with large recruitment needs, like battery companies and new steel plants in Norrland which often require labour from third countries.

EXPLAINED:

“We will continue to engage with industry and employer organisations to meet their information needs. The goal is to increase the proportion of complete applications”, Mindhammar said.

Why are they doing this?

“We want Sweden to be competitive and to be able to attract talented people. That means making it simple to apply for work permits and for the process to go quickly,” Sweden’s Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said at a press conference in May 2023 announcing the system. 

“We’ve unfortunately been dragged down by long processing times which have sometimes affected companies’ ability to compete.” 

The so-called certified process, brought in back in 2011 by the Moderate-led Alliance government to reduce the then 12-month wait for work permits for big companies, had also stopped working, they said.

When it started only 20 companies were certified, most of them big employers like Volvo or Ericsson, now there are 640 companies, with many others accessing the process through agents such as EY. 

In an interview with The Local’s Sweden in Focus podcast, Mindhammar’s predecessor, Mikael Ribbenvik, said that he had lobbied the government behind the scenes to task him with this, as it would allow him to carry out root and branch reform. 

“I said to the government, ‘if this is what you want, be clear and task us with promoting that [highly skilled] segment’, and they did, and I’m very happy about that,” he said.

SHOW COMMENTS