SHARE
COPY LINK

IMMIGRATION

Record number of Swedish citizenship applications concluded

Sweden’s Migration Agency expects to make a decision on a new record number of citizenship applications this year, as an increased focus on reducing long processing times begins to have an effect.

Record number of Swedish citizenship applications concluded
File photo of a Migration Agency office in Sweden. Photo: Adam Wrafter/SvD/TT

The Local has previously written about the long queues for Swedish citizenship, and the waiting times have also been criticised by Sweden’s Parliamentary Ombudsmen.

But things are now moving in the right direction, according to the Migration Agency.

In 2021, it made a decision on around 85,000 citizenship applications, the highest number yet, following efforts to streamline the process.

In October and November last year, around 11,000 citizenship applications were concluded per month, an increase of more than 70 percent compared to the monthly average in the first half of 2021.

“The investment in citizenship has started having an effect in the form of a significant increase in the number of concluded cases in the last quarter of 2021. We also saw that a trend was broken and the number of open citizenship cases began to decrease,” reads a new report by the Migration Agency, which sets out the agency’s forecast for the coming years.

It predicts it will again break the record for concluded cases this year, estimating it will make a decision on around 110,000 citizenship applications in both 2022 and 2023.

However, it warns that waiting times are expected to remain long for now, but that it expects to reach the target at the end of 2023, with no applicant waiting more than six months. At the turn of the year, around 100,000 people were waiting for Swedish citizenship.

Member comments

  1. I am waiting for a decision on citizenship application since September 2020, while I know people who applied last year and got reply in a week. How fair is this? Why not to process historical applications first, in order? I don’t even have a case officer yet, according Migrationsverket website.

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

IMMIGRATION

More than 20 British citizens ‘absconded’ after orders to leave Sweden

More than 20 British citizens are feared to be living underground in Sweden, after failing to secure their residency following the UK leaving the European Union, Swedish border police have told The Local.

More than 20 British citizens 'absconded' after orders to leave Sweden

According to Swedish police statistics, there are currently 38 cases open regarding UK citizens with an expulsion order, of which 24 are cases that have been passed to the police by the Migration Agency after the person’s applications for residency received their final rejection. 

“Twenty two persons from this category have absconded, meaning they are avoiding the authorities,” Irene Sokolow, a police press spokesperson, told The Local, adding that in the other two cases, the police know for certain that the person remains in the country.

Almost 4,000 British nationals have been issued orders to leave by EU and Schengen area countries since Brexit, with Sweden responsible for about 1,185 of that number. 

Brits nonetheless represent less than a tenth of the 36,000 people given expulsion orders in Sweden from the start of 2021 until the end of 2023, according to Eurostat numbers collated by the Europaportalen website, of whom about 24,000 are known to have left the country. 

Currently, an expulsion order from Sweden expires after four years, something Sweden’s Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said last month should be changed as it creates an incentive for those ordered to leave to go into hiding and then reapply for residency after four years. 

“This of course contributes to the fact that many individuals go underground, which as a result makes return efforts more difficult and less efficient,” she said after receiving the recommentations of a government inquiry

SHOW COMMENTS