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WORK PERMITS

Family ordered to leave Sweden after six years over employer’s error

In the latest example of foreign workers being penalized under Sweden's strict work permit laws, a family of five has been ordered to leave the country after the father's employer paid him too little holiday pay.

Published: 15 May 2019 08:59 CEST
Family ordered to leave Sweden after six years over employer's error
A Migration Agency office in Småland, southern Sweden. Photo: Adam Wrafter/SvD/TT

The Hoxha family from Albania have lived in Lenhovda, Småland, since 2013, but have now been told to leave the country after Gentian Hoxha's work permit extension was rejected.

“The company didn't pay out my holiday compensation in time because they had problems with money, and that's not my fault,” Gentian Hoxha told SVT Småland. “My youngest son was born in Sweden, why shouldn't he grow up here? I haven't done anything wrong, it's unfair.”

Sweden has strict rules around holiday entitlement, and employees with 25 days' holiday may only save five of these days to use in a future year; any further days must be converted to money and paid out as semesterersättning.

Hoxha had 58 outstanding vacation days, which he had earned over a three-year period, which his employer did not compensate him for in time. Even though the company paid out the missing semesterersättning just days after the Migration Agency decision, that did not change the outcome. 

After laws about work permits were tightened and came to apply retroactively in 2015, the Migration Agency began judging such cases more strictly, and the number of permit rejections rose dramatically.

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In December 2017, legislation was passed which meant permits should not be rejected if a mistake had been noticed and action taken to correct it before it was pointed out by the Migration Agency – but the complicated nature of the paperwork means that often employers and workers believe they have followed the process correctly and only learn of the mistake when the permit is rejected.

Judgments from the Migration Supreme Court have also set a precedent that decisions should be based on an overall assessment of factors, meaning that one minor mistake should not derail an otherwise good application. 

But a Migration Agency spokesperson told SVT Småland that three years of unpaid vacation pay could not be considered to be a minor mistake.

In order to apply for a new work permit, Hoxha must reapply from Albania, meaning he would need to leave his job and the home he owns. 

The family has reportedly appealed the decision to multiple bodies, so far without success, and is currently waiting to see if the Migration Court will approve an exemption to the requirement to be outside Sweden when making a new work permit application.

READ ALSO: Everything you need to know about annual leave in Sweden

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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.

Published: 26 January 2024 15:26 CET
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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