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VISAS

Foreign PhDs welcome Swedish visa reform bill

Sweden's migration minister wants foreign PhD students to be granted permanent residence after four years of research, welcome news for highly-skilled international researchers who have lobbied for reform.

Foreign PhDs welcome Swedish visa reform bill
Foreign PhD students protest the visa system. Photo: Equality for PhDs in Sweden/Facebook

Migration Minister Tobias Billström on Thursday announced that the government had submitted a proposed bill to the legal council, Lagrådet, which examines whether new laws are compatible with existing legislation. From there, the bill would be passed on to parliament for a vote.

If the legislation passes the Riksdag, a foreign PhD student who has spent four of the past seven years employed as a researcher will be able to apply for permanent residence.
"It has been a very important question for international PhD students and international students overall to get these dated, very antiquated rules changed," said Erik Pedersen, vice chairman of Sweden's Student Union Association.
 
Currently, PhD students have a slim window – ten days – in which to find work after completing their studies. The system has applied in the same way to them as it has to undergraduates or master's students, the student union noted. If the foreign researchers failed to find work after defending their thesis, their visa simply ran out. 
 
"It's an odd starting point, as the PhD students work and contribute to the universities' research," Pedersen told The Local. "To consider what they do as not being equal to other employees means you value their work differently."
 
The head of the students union's PhD committee, Johan Svantesson Sjöberg, has been critical of the system for years.
"You've thrown people out for no reason," he told The Local. "It's bad for the individual, but also bad for Sweden."
 
There are roughly 5,000 foreign PhD students in Sweden, revealed a tally by Statistics Sweden in 2013.
 
Svantesson Sjöberg said that many of them took to the Facebook page Equality for foreign PhDs in Sweden to discuss the news on Thursday that the government has moved forward on visa reform. 
 
"Until it is approved, there is no point to be satisfied..," one commenter wrote on the page.
 
The issue has been so contentious that several foreign PhD students took to the streets of Stockholm and Gothenburg to protest against the rules earlier this week. 
 
"It is a pity that these highly-skilled scholars need to hit the streets to ask for their rights!" a page member wrote.
 
The migration minister told the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper that the reform would help make Swedish higher education more competitive globally. Last week, two of three Swedish universities on the Times Higher Education ranking fell off the list entirely.
"We have lost competence and knowledge with the rules that we had," said student union vice head Pedersen. "The rules weren't adapted to today's world where it's so easy to move between countries."

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RESIDENCY PERMITS

The difficulties of moving to Sweden as a non-EU spouse… even if you marry a Swedish princess

Sweden's Princess Madeleine and her British-American husband, Chris O'Neill, are returning to Sweden after living in Florida since 2018. But how can Chris move to Sweden as a non-EU citizen?

The difficulties of moving to Sweden as a non-EU spouse... even if you marry a Swedish princess

Princess Madeleine and Chris O’Neill are moving back to Sweden with their three children in August. We hope they like it here.

Unfortunately for O’Neill, some things have changed since he left Sweden in 2015. Brits are no longer EU citizens, which means he’ll have to apply for a residence permit like all the other non-EU citizens planning a move to Sweden.

Unlike before, when O’Neill could live in Sweden as a self-sufficient EU citizen with comprehensive health insurance, there’s no such option for non-EU citizens, meaning he’ll have to fulfil the criteria for a non-EU residence permit (uppehållstillstånd), apply from abroad, and potentially wait for his permit to be processed before he can enter Sweden.

With waiting times well over a year for both family reunification permits and work permits, planning a move to Sweden in just a few months might be a bit… optimistic.

What options does Chris O’Neill have?

The most obvious route for O’Neill to take is a residence permit for moving to someone in Sweden, sometimes also referred to as a sambo permit.

O’Neill qualifies for this, as he is married to a Swedish citizen. His wife must also be able to support him and his three children. According to the Migration Agency, this maintenance requirement is fulfilled if the family member in Sweden has enough money to pay for their home, as well as living costs for the family.

The Migration Agency states more specifically that the Swedish family member must earn 9,445 kronor per month to support a couple living together, plus 3,055 kronor per month for each child under the age of six and 3,667 kronor for each child aged between 7 and 10 years old.

The couple’s children are aged 5, 7 and 9, meaning that Madeleine will need earnings of at least 19,834 kronor a month (after tax) on top of housing costs in order to fulfil this requirement. She can also fulfil this requirement by having enough savings to support the entire family for at least two years – so a mere 476,016 kronor, plus whatever their housing costs will be for the two-year period.

Let’s assume that she can cover the family’s living costs – she’s a member of the Swedish royal family, after all. 

Next, Madeleine needs to have a home “of a suitable size and standard” for the family to live in together.

The Swedish Migration Agency states that a family consisting of two adults needs to have an apartment with a minimum of one room and a kitchen or kitchenette, with more rooms necessary if the family has children. Two children can share one room, it states, meaning that O’Neill and Madeleine need a room with at least three rooms, one kitchen and one bathroom for them and their three children.

The family’s seven-room apartment by Nybroplan in Stockholm is definitely “of a suitable size”, and after a six million kronor renovation a few years ago we can assume that the standard is up to scratch.

O’Neill will also have to provide proof of identity with a valid passport. He’s a citizen of the US and the UK, so here he can choose whichever passport he prefers.

Great, so Madeleine and Chris O’Neill easily fulfil the requirements. 

What are the next steps? 

Firstly, as Madeleine is a Swedish citizen planning on moving to Sweden with a family member who does not hold EU citizenship, the couple will need to prove that they are planning on moving to Sweden “within the near future”. They can do this by providing a housing contract or a job offer, or presumably a press statement from the Swedish royal family stating their plans to move over in August.

O’Neill can’t move to Sweden until his application has been processed, but he is allowed to visit Sweden for up to 90 days at a time, and, as a citizen of a visa-free country, he doesn’t need a visa to do so.

He may also need to visit a Swedish embassy abroad in order to undertake an interview before his application can be processed.

With the family planning on enrolling their children in Swedish schools this autumn, it looks like Chris and Madeleine – like many couples consisting of a Swede and a non-EU citizen – will have to live apart, with Chris separated from his children for months at a time.

In that time, he won’t be eligible for a Swedish personal number, Swedish healthcare, or any other benefits such as sick leave or VAB.

He’ll also have trouble getting BankID or opening a Swedish bank account (unless he already has one from last time they lived in Sweden), and may struggle to get a gym membership, phone contract, or even a membership card at the local ICA (do husbands of princesses do their own food shopping?)

As a British citizen applying for a residence permit for the first time to move to someone in Sweden for the first time who he has been living together with outside Sweden for at least two years, O’Neill can expect to wait around 15 months. Now, that figure isn’t a guide – technically, only 75 percent of recently closed cases matching those criteria were concluded within 15 months – so he could have a much longer or much shorter wait before he’s reunited with his family.

You may be thinking ‘but he’s a successful businessman, can’t he just apply as a self-employed person’? Well, yes, if he wants, but then he’ll be waiting even longer – 75 percent of recently closed cases for permits as a self-employed person got an answer within 29 months.

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