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WORK PERMITS

Sweden loses battle to deport mechanic who took no holiday

An Iraqi mechanic who faced deportation because he failed to take a holiday can now stay in Sweden, a Migration Court in Malmö has ruled.

Sweden loses battle to deport mechanic who took no holiday
Sameer Subhat won his case in the Migration Court. Photo: Centre for Justice
“I have no words to describe how happy I feel,” Sameer Suhbat, 23, said in a statement after the judgement was handed down on Tuesday. 
 
The court ruled in its judgement that Suhbat, who lives in Täby outside Stockholm, could stay because his working conditions had not undercut those allowed according to his work permit, as Sweden's Migration Agency claimed.
 
He had, the court noted, even been paid for a period when he hadn't had to work because the garage had been shut. 
 
“That Sameer Suhbat did not receive holiday benefits during this period cannot therefore be seen as a disadvantage to him,” the court ruled. “It should instead be deemed to have been to his advantage to be given time off while still receiving a salary.” 
 
Johannes Forssberg, the lawyer at the Stockholm public interest law firm Centre for Justice who represented Subhat, said the case had been one of the most marked examples of the Migration Agency's narrow and overzealous interpretation of work permit law. 
 
“Common sense has beaten the Migration Agency's strange interpretation of the law,” Forssberg said. “This is a sensible and rational judgement.” 
 
Forssberg said he hoped Subhat's case would now set a precedent on two important issues: mistakes made by previous employers, and how to judge whether an employee has been granted sufficient holidays. 
 
 
The Migration Agency last May ruled that Subhat should be deported because he had taken insufficient holiday, even though he had not worked for his new employer long enough to quality for any paid time off. 
 
It said that he should have taken an unpaid holiday, even though under Swedish law, an employee cannot be forced to take a holiday without salary. 
 
According to the law firm, since the top-tier court the Migration Court of Appeal ruled against the Migration Agency in the “pizza baker case” in December, the agency has tended to take a more nuanced approach to work permit holders whose employers have made mistakes over salary and insurance. 
 
But, in cases involving holidays, it said that the agency had up until now remained inflexible. 
 
Yesterday, The Local reported on the case of a sales engineer from Iran who lost his fight in the first-tier appeals court, the Migration Court, because of a series of errors made by his employer.
 

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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.

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