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More than 1,000 Brits apply for Swedish passports after Brexit

More than a thousand Brits have applied for Swedish passports since the Brexit vote, but they may face waits of over a year for citizenship.

Published: 13 December 2016 16:04 CET

More than 1,000 Brits apply for Swedish passports after Brexit

A Swedish passport. Photo: Christine Olsson/TT

A total of 1,082 British nationals applied for Swedish citizenship between the Brexit referendum on June 23rd and December 12th, according to figures provided by the Migration Agency to The Local, more than twice as many as last year.

Of those, 507 Brits have had their applications approved, 14 have had theirs rejected and eight applications have been written off for other reasons. This leaves in total 553 people who are still waiting to find out whether or not they may become Swedish citizens, and some of them may have to wait over a year.

Stephen, 34, who works in human resources for a multinational company in Stockholm and asked us not to publish his full name, is one of them. He applied for dual citizenship at the end of July.

“I have two small boys and straight after the Brexit vote I realized that I could be in a situation where I have to get a Visa to stay in the country to be with my family and that the freedom we enjoy now, with the EU, could be severely restricted,” he told The Local.

Stephen is a British national who has been living and working in Sweden since 2009. EU citizens who have lived in Sweden for at least five years – or who have lived here three years, two years of which with a Swedish citizen – are eligible for Swedish citizenship.

“To be honest, I probably would have applied anyway even if Brexit hadn't happened. I feel at home in Sweden, making my contributions, learning the language and integrating,” he said.

When he contacted the Migration Agency this month to ask how his application was progressing, he was told that they were currently processing applications from September 2015 and that he should expect a wait of around 17-19 months from the date he applied.

“The waiting time for a decision in migration citizenship cases is currently 2-5 months for cases that do not need to be investigated and 17-19 months for applications that do need to be investigated,” Annette Grafen Silander of the Migration Agency's citizenship unit explained to The Local, adding that this includes investigating even seemingly simple and straightforward details.

Meanwhile, some applicants receive responses on a much shorter time scale.

Simon Linter, a writer in Stockholm, applied for Swedish citizenship immediately after the referendum. The Migration Agency's website warned him at the time that he could end up waiting up to 18 months.

“A friend of mine who applied way before the referendum said it took her ten months, so I prepared myself for a wait,” he told The Local. “My UK passport was (and still is) due to run out in January next year, so I faced being without a passport if it took as long as 10-18 months.”

“After two months I got sent the piece of paper with my citizenship confirmed, so I applied for a Swedish passport, which took a day to process after I had filled in the form. I found the process really easy, encountered no problems, and have been impressed at the speed of the passport application.”

Sweden has not yet confirmed how it expects to treat the status of British citizens who do not hold Swedish passports once their country quits the EU. A justice ministry spokesperson told The Local shortly after the referendum that a decision would likely not be made until the UK formally asks to leave the union.

And for Brits such as Stephen, it is an uneasy wait, although he describes himself as “frustrated with the lack of information” rather than worried. “For me it is a formality, the process should be simple, but it isn't. It seems more complicated and lengthy than it has to be,” he said.

But when asked what he would do if forced to choose between his country of birth and his adopted country, he is not sure.

“It's a big question mark, I don't want to be put in that situation. I've been here seven years, but to ask someone to take away the past 27 years of their lives, that's a big thing to ask. I want dual citizenship, because I feel like a citizen of both Britain and Sweden.”

For Linter, he too is concerned about the future, but is reassured by his Swedish passport.

“I still feel that Swedish citizenship was worth getting because of the uncertainty,” he said. “I also feel that I should have applied for Swedish citizenship anyway as I have lived in Sweden since 2003 and it feels like my home. There are certain people back in the UK that I feel see me as a traitor for doing so, but that's their problem, not mine.”

Long waiting times at the Migration Agency not only affect Brits in the citizenship queue, but also asylum seekers, work permit applicants and those hoping to get residency because of family ties to Sweden.

The interim head of the work permit unit in Stockholm, which has hired more staff to deal with the workload, told The Local in November that he expects waiting times to start going down in 2017.

'I feel exiled': How Brits in Europe are locked abroad with foreign partners

Europe is home to hundreds of thousands of British nationals, many of whom have foreign partners and children. But if they want to move to the UK to live and work it will soon become more difficult.

When it comes to getting a partner visa, the UK has some of the strictest rules in Europe. In addition to hefty fees and a healthcare surcharge, the Home Office requires British citizens and long-term residents who bring their foreign partner to the UK to have a minimum income showing they can support them without relying on the social security system.

The minimum income up until now was set at £18,600 (€21,700), or £22,400 (€26,100) if the couple had one child, plus another £2,400 (€2,800) for each other child.

But these income requirements will rise steeply from April 11th 2024.

How it works: What Brits in Europe should know about UK’s new minimum income rules

From this date the minimum a British national or long-term resident will need to earn if they want to return home will increase to £29,000 (€33,800) and up to £38,000 (€44,313) by spring 2025, although there will no longer be an additional amount for accompanying children.

Alternatively, families need to prove they have at least £62,500 (€72,884) in cash, which from 11 April will increase to £88,500 (€103,207).

‘Family life has been destroyed’

To put this in context the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford suggests that around 50 percent of UK employees earn less than the £29,000 threshold and 70 percent less than £38,700. The Observatory also says that while the number of people affected by the policy is small compared to the overall UK immigration (family visas represent 5 percent of all entry visas), the impacts on concerned families can be “very significant”.

The Migration Observatory notes that other European countries apply income thresholds to sponsor foreign partners. Spain, for instance, requires sponsors to have an annual income equal to the social security salary. In Denmark, sponsors must not have claimed social benefits in the three years before the application. But in Spain and the US, the partner’s foreign income also counts towards the threshold.

So what does this mean for mixed British and international families living in Europe who might want or even need to return to the UK to live?

Campaigners have complained that many Britons with foreign partners have simply been “locked abroad” or families have been separated while they try to meet the minimum income or savings requirement.

Reunite Families UK, a non-profit organisation supporting people affected by the UK spouse visa rules, says this policy causes distress, especially for children.

Some 65 percent of respondents in research carried out by the group said that their child received a diagnosis of a mental health condition due to the separation of their parents.

“Since its introduction, this policy has destroyed the family life of countless people and children,” Matteo Besana, Advocacy and Campaigns Manager at Reunite Families UK said.

“Women have been forced to become single parents to their children and live away from their partner and the father of their children only because they didn’t meet the threshold.

“As shown by our research on the mental health impact of the policy, these are scars that, particularly for children, will be carried for the rest of their lives,” Besana said.

The people most likely to be affected are women, who tend to earn less or not work because they took on caring responsibilities. Also heavily impacted are people under 30 and over 50 years of age, people living outside London and the Southeast of England where wages are higher, and those belonging to specific ethnicities, according to the Migration Observatory.

The Local spoke to two British women, in Italy and Sweden, struggling to return to the UK with their families because of these rules.

More savings needed

Sarah Douglas, who has been living in Italy since 2007, was planning to return to Scotland with her Italian husband and three children.

“It was always our long-term goal to move back to the UK after we had our children and once we’d have saved enough to buy a home in the UK,” she said.

“In hindsight, we should have gone after the Brexit referendum, but in the beginning it wasn’t clear what the final deal would be and I naively assumed that situations like mine would be taken into account and we would have the right to return… Once it did become clear, we were in the middle of the pandemic and it wasn’t the time to move,” she said.

Having stayed home to take care of the children, Sarah will find it hard to land a job near her family in Scotland that meets the minimum income required to sponsor a foreign partner for a UK visa.

Her husband, a computer programmer, has been trying to get an employment visa, “but most of them state that you must already have permission to work in the UK,” Sarah says. And applying for British citizenship is not an option for a non-UK resident spouse.

‘People need to be aware’

Sarah and her husband are trying to save as much as they can, an alternative to the income requirement, but the amount they need is rising to almost £90,000, meaning it may be a long time before they have enough to move home.

While the aim of the UK’s policy is to ensure families moving to the UK are not a burden on the taxpayer, the reality is that people arriving on a family visa are not able to claim any benefits from the UK government.

“They should judge the overall financial viability of the family unit, rather than just the earning potential of the sponsoring partner,” Sarah says.

“We could live well with my husband’s salary and he could work remotely. We are stable and financially secure, but because I don’t earn any money, they say we are not able to support ourselves.”

Sarah says that most of the British public are unaware of the minimum income requirement.

“People think if you are married, your husband is allowed to come to the UK, but when I say no, it doesn’t work like that, they are really surprised. A lot of people are not aware of how this could affect them,” she said.

Looking for a job from abroad

Another British women who lives in Sweden with her South African husband and two children and plans to move to the UK told The Local how the minimum income requirement had put them in a “precarious and stressful situation”.

The woman, who preferred to remain anonymous said: “After having the two children, I was very fortunate to find a research position and do my PhD, which is a salaried position in Scandinavia, and now that I finished, we are looking to leave.

“But I need a job in the UK to sponsor my husband, and as a new graduate with limited work experience, it is not easy. It is even more difficult when you are not in the country and I missed out on opportunities because they wanted an immediate start. I really don’t want to move without my whole family,” she said.

She says the UK’s policy is “gendered and geographically discriminatory” because it makes life harder for women and also harder for anyone who is planning to move to a part of the country that isn’t in London, where salaries are higher.

“I feel exiled from my country and separated from my family there,” she said.

Her husband, she argues, has his own company and could continue working remotely from the UK, earning well above the requirement. He would also pay taxes and national insurance while having to pay the healthcare surcharge, a form of double taxation, she argues. But that would not entitle him to a visa.

“Our house is on the market now. We have booked removal companies for the 6th of June. The dog is booked for his transport. I just think this policy is so out of touch with the modern world,” she said.

Reunite Families UK has called on the government to recognise the right for British or settled citizens to bring their close family members to the UK and scrap the minimum income requirement. Alternatively, the group says the rules should take into consideration the earning potential of both partners and consider “the best interests of children”.

A petition on the UK parliament website asks the government to reconsider the minimum income policy. If it reaches 100,000 signatures, it will have to be debated in parliament.

This article has been produced by Europe Street news.

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