SHARE
COPY LINK

WORK PERMITS

Deported engineer sues Sweden over work permit rejections

An Iranian sales engineer who was forced to leave Sweden over a former employer's error is suing the state – the first time a deported labour immigrant is pressing charges against the country itself.

Deported engineer sues Sweden over work permit rejections
Ali Omumi at Stockholm District Court. Photo: Rikard Samuelsson/Centre for Justice

Ali Omumi, who works for major Swedish engineering company ABB, was ordered to leave Sweden last year because a previous employer had made an error over his health insurance.

His case became one of the most high-profile out of a series of employees having their work permit renewals rejected over minor administrative errors – a problem that grew so ubiquitous that it became known under its own name as 'talent deportation', or kompetensutvisning in Swedish.

Omumi's situation was even debated in the Swedish parliament after an MP said he read about the engineer in The Local and was also brought up by organizations such as the Diversify Foundation.

He was then initially blocked from returning to Sweden on a new work permit, after the Migration Agency said it had been submitted “after too short a time” following the earlier rejection – however that decision was thrown out by the Migration Court and Omumi is now back working for ABB in Sweden.

The father-of-one is now taking the case to court, demanding that Sweden compensate him for the income he lost due to the two decisions.

The Centre for Justice, which is representing him, said it was “the first time that a wrongfully deported labour migrant sues the state and demands responsibility for the Migration Agency's talent deportations”.

“The talent deportations have meant personal tragedies for those who have been wrongly expelled and have been detrimental for Sweden. The state now has to take responsibility for the fact that the Migration Agency is making up rules and does not follow the applicable rules,” said Alexandra Loyd, legal counsel at the Centre for Justice.

“I can't understand why I had to quit my job at ABB and why I was treated like a criminal. With this legal process I hope to make a difference for other workers who have been wrongly expelled by the Migration Agency,” Omumi told TV4 as the lawsuit was handed into Stockholm District Court on Friday.

EXPLAINED:

Omumi is not the only work permit holder who has made headlines in recent years. In 2017, more than 1,800 people had their work permit extensions rejected by the Migration Agency, after Sweden tightened its rules with the intention of cracking down on dishonest employers taking advantage of foreign labour.

It's not possible to say how many of these rejections were due to minor administrative errors like in Omumi's case, but the number was well over the double the figures for previous years, after a 2015 decision from the Migration Court of Appeal led to Swedish authorities interpreting cases on an increasingly strict basis.

But progress is being made.

Campaigners, media and politicians have been raising awareness of the issue, and in December 2017, the Migration Court of Appeal ruled that work permit renewals should be based on an overall assessment of each case (helhetsbedömning), rather than allowing single, small errors to derail an application.

This was hailed a landmark ruling for work permit holders, and although there have been several high-profile cases of people getting deported due to their employer's errors since, on the whole the number of rejections has fallen significantly.

In 2018, 664 people had their work permit renewals rejected, followed by 550 between January 1st and December 8th this year, according to fresh figures given to The Local by the Migration Agency. That is a return to the levels seen before 2017, when the issue first started making major headlines in Sweden.

EDITOR'S PICKS:

Member comments

  1. Woah woah woaaahhh.
    Talk about entitlement…It’s a privilege to move to Sweden. He should be thankful for the time he had, and the lessons he learned.
    Lesson #1: Check your own paperwork.
    Lesson #2: Sweden has loads of sales engineers, as is a rather successful
    nation on its own
    Lesson #3: Being a sales engineer isn’t such a big deal. It’s not like
    being an artificial intelligence software developer with a Ph.D in

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

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.

SHOW COMMENTS