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‘Sweden’s pain is the UK’s gain’: Other countries target entrepreneur set to be deported

A dealmaker for the UK's Department for International Trade is seeking to bring a drone entrepreneur and his business to Britain after he had his Swedish work permit extension refused for paying himself too little salary.

Published: 28 June 2019 17:32 CEST
Updated: 28 June 2019 19:49 CEST
'Sweden's pain is the UK's gain': Other countries target entrepreneur set to be deported
Ahmed AlNomany shows off one of his drones in a mine. Photo: Inkonova
Anthony Sheehan said he had approached Ahmed AlNomany, the founder of drone company Inkonova and IoT company Batonics, after reading about his problems on The Local. 
 
“He's a really strong entrepreneur who's onto his second company already and the reason he's been asked to leave is a bit ridiculous,” Sheehan, who is himself an entrepreneur, told The Local.
 
“In some ways Sweden's pain is the UK's gain.” 
 
Sheehan said he was advising AlNomany, who is now an 'Entrepreneur in Residence' at Swedish tech giant Ericsson, on how to apply for one of the new Innovator visas launched by the UK at the end of March. 
 
With the Innovator visa, entrepreneurs must first get a letter of endorsement from one of 26 Innovator endorsement bodies, primarily startup hubs, accelerators and regional development bodies. Sheehan said the endorsement system reduced the risk that immigrants would set up a company simply as a ruse to gain residency. 
 
“What we did with the previous entrepreneurs visa was to have a financial bar, and it was just a way for rich kids to get here,” he said. “The idea now is a two-phase process, the government can't decide who is a good entrepreneur, so they've handed it out to experts in the entrepreneur ecosystem. It's a smart way forward.” 
 
Alternatively, he said, he was advising AlNomany to apply for a special talent visa. 
 
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Are you a The Local reader who want to share your story? Get in touch. Photo: Vidar Ruud/NTB scanpix/TT 
 
AlNomany, who was born and grew up in Dubai, arrived in Sweden in 2015, setting up a mining drone company Inkonova, based at Stockholm's THINGS startup hub at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
 
But in 2017 he had his work permit extension refused because he had paid himself too little in the company's early years. He lost his final appeal at the start of this month. 
 
He told The Local he was also in talks with the University of Luxembourg and the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia about relocating there.
 
Sheehan said Sweden was not alone in struggling to tailor its work permit and visa system for international entrepreneurs. “It's not a problem that's unique to Sweden. We see it in different countries and we're not immune from it ourselves,” he said.
 
“If you're a native Swede, it's a great place to start a business,” he added. “We see a few Swedish entrepreneurs come to the UK, but not many.” 
 
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He said Sweden's startup scene was so strong that it would be easy to mimic the UK's Innovator visa and give accelerators a say over who should be granted a work permit. 
 
“There are plenty of groups in and around Stockholm and Sweden who could play that role. It could work.”
 
Sheehan, who has his own company developing drone-transported defibrillators, works for a few days a month as a 'deal maker' in the UK Department for International Trade's Global Entrepreneur Programme.  
 
The Global Entrepreneur Programme had brought about 1,000 companies to the UK, primarily from Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.
 
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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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