For the past three months Carl Bexelius, Head of Legal Affairs at Sweden’s Migration Agency, has been working flat out to put in place new structures to deal with the many changes to Sweden’s work permit regime which came into effect on June 1st. 

“The regulations regarding work permits in Sweden haven’t changed significantly in the past seven or eight years, so these changes are quite extensive,” he tells The Local. 

The changes include a new ‘talent visa’, a requirement for employers to alert the agency of any negative changes to employment terms, a requirement for workers bringing their families to show they can support them, and the requirement to show a signed employment contract. 

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The agency has been busy updating routines, checklists and training manuals for staff, training staff in the new requirements, and taking on new employees to deal with the extra workload the new laws are likely to bring. 

“It’s quite extensive work that we have done, and this should also be looked at in the light of the fact that we have increased numbers of applications for work permits as well, so we have had to hire new staff, as we see that this legislation is quite complex.”

Even with the additional resources in place, though, he still expects the additional requirements on the agency to mean longer processing times for applications, although he said it remained to be seen if this meant extra weeks or extra months. 

“It’s quite difficult to estimate since some of these provisions are entirely new. We haven’t dealt with these cases before,” he said. 

He said it was, for instance, difficult to estimate how many people would apply to come to Sweden on the new “permit for highly skilled persons”, and the same went for some of the other new provisions. 

“We don’t know how much they will be used, basically, so we are monitoring this, this first year, and it shouldn’t be excluded that we need to relocate resources within the agency as well.” 

What will count as a “minor deviation” or a “disproportionate” decision to refuse a permit?  

Bexelius dismissed the criticism that the clauses in the new law designed to stop so-called “talent deportations” left too much room for interpretation. 

“It is very difficult for the legislator to specify all situations, so it’s up to the competent authority that applies these rules, the Migration Agency and the courts as well.” 

But he said that the law had done “a good job” specifying that the Migration Agency should excuse both “minor deviations”, and also more serious deviations where it would be “disproportionate” to refuse a permit. 

He gives a few examples of minor deviations. 

“It could be, for instance, that for a couple of months, the salary has been below what was initially stated, maybe 200-400 kronor. It could be that for a couple of months, the insurance wasn’t in place.” 

When it comes to more serious deviation where it would nonetheless be “disproportionate” to refuse a permit, a lot will come down to whether the explanations given for the mistake are “excusable” and “reasonable”, and also to the past record of the employer. 

What kind of job contract will you need to provide? Is a digital signature good enough? 

A key question people considering applying for work permits have after the new rules have come in is what sort of signed contract they need to send along with their application, as sending paper contracts back and forth to countries in Asia or Africa to be signed can take weeks. Some wonder whether the agency will accept contracts as a digitally signed PDF file. 

“There are no formal requirements, since we have no provisions regarding what a job contract should look like,” Bexelius says. “So the crucial part is that we as the authority can assess the information, and that there is a legal contract between the two parties, and that could take different forms.

“I think we will see different forms of contracts being accepted when this legislation is in place, and I guess we will also see interpretations from the courts.”

How much does the new maintenance requirement raise the bar for work permit applicants? 

The new work permit law does not change the bottom salary that those applying for work permits can be paid, which is currently at a very low 13,000 kronor. It does, however, require first-time applicants who are bringing their families to prove that they can support them. 

They will need to show that they have access to 8,520 SEK if they are bringing a spouse or co-habitant partner, 2,736 kronor for children up to six years old, and 3,150 SEK a month for children over the age of seven. 

Bexelius said that the new requirement would effectively increase the minimum salary needed to receive a work permit for anyone coming with dependents. 

“Quite often, you’re either a single man or woman, so in that sense, there won’t be any changes. But if you want to bring your family as well, yes, that will be the result.” 

Why have so-called “talent deportations” continued to happen so long after the alarm was raised? 

When asked about why “talent deportations”, the refusal of work permits to highly skilled workers, had continued to happen long after it became a big national issue in 2015-2016, Bexelius argued that a lot of the Migration Agency’s decisions had in fact been justified. 

In the preparations for the new legislation, an analysis of about a hundred Migration Agency work permit refusals had found, he said, that less than five percent were for “minor deviations”. 

“They couldn’t find any systematic abuse from the agency in that regard, so I think you should have in mind that there could, of course, be situations where individuals believe that there were minor deviations, but that is not how we assess the current case law.” 

But he also said that the problems around the issue had stemmed from a lack of clear legislation on work permits, which had left too much of burden for interpreting and setting policy with the Migration Agency and the Migration Court. 

“This is an area which is very important for Sweden, and it has been left to the Migration Courts to develop case law in an area where you have seen changes in how you look at work permits and in what you need to do to attract and get highly skilled labour,” he said. 

The legal framework was changed by court judgements in 2015 and in 2017, but no new legislation was put in place, leaving the Migration Agency and lower Migration Courts to rely heavily on case law. 

“There’s quite an extensive case law on the area of work permits from the Migration Court of Appeal — I can’t find another area where you’ve had so many cases, and that is because the Migration Court has deemed it necessary to explain to the lower courts and the Migration Agency how this should work.”

“That poses some problems, because case law developing how applicable provisions should be applied is not as clear and stable as when you have new provisions, particularly where you have preparatory work to explain [the law].”