Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

WORK PERMITS

What are my rights while I wait for my Swedish residence permit to be extended?

Many foreigners living in Sweden need to have a residence permit to live in the country legally. Permits are issued for two years at a time and can be renewed 30 days before expiry, at the earliest. But with waiting times as high as 20 months for some applicants, just what are your rights while you wait to hear back?

Published: 2 August 2022 14:37 CEST
Updated: 2 August 2023 14:35 CEST
What are my rights while I wait for my Swedish residence permit to be extended?
Photo: Janerik Henriksson / TT

Can I keep working in Sweden?

It depends. If you have a residence permit which allows you to work in Sweden, have held that residence permit for at least six months and apply for an extension before your old permit expires, you still have the right to work in Sweden while you wait for the Migration Agency to make a decision on your permit application.

You can apply for a new residence permit 30 days before your old permit expires, at the earliest, and you can’t get a new residence permit before your old one has run out.

Can I leave Sweden?

Technically you can, but it might not be a good idea. This is due to the fact that if you leave Sweden after your residence permit has expired, it can be difficult to enter Sweden again before your new permit is granted, even if you can prove that you’ve applied for a new one.

In the worst-case scenario, you could be denied entry to Sweden at the border and forced to wait in another country until your new residence permit is granted. 

If you find yourself in this situation, you can, in some cases, apply for a national visa allowing you to re-enter Sweden. These are only granted under exceptional circumstances, and must be applied for at a Swedish embassy or general consulate in the country you are staying in. If you are not granted a national visa to re-enter Sweden, you can’t appeal the decision, meaning you’ll have to wait until your residence permit is approved before you can re-enter Sweden.

The Migration Agency writes on its website that you should only leave Sweden while your application is being processed “in exceptional cases, and if you really have to”.

It lists some examples of exceptional cases as “sudden illness, death in the family or important work-related assignments”, adding that you may need to provide proof of your reason for travelling to the embassy when you apply for a national visa to re-enter Sweden.

What if I come from a visa-free country?

If you come from a visa-free country, you are able to re-enter Sweden without needing a visa if you have a valid residence permit or are waiting for your residence permit to be extended.

According to the Migration Agency, “if an individual has submitted their extension application in time (before the earlier permit ran out), they also have the right to live and work in Sweden until a decision is made on the application”.

It is important that you are able document this in some way, as visa-free non-EU citizens entering Schengen are only allowed to stay in the bloc for 90 days out of every 180 before they require a visa, unless they can document that they have the right to live in a Schengen country, for example via a residence permit or proof that they have applied for an extension to their residence permit.

If you are a member of this group and you stay in Schengen for longer than 90 days without a visa, a valid residence permit, or proof that you are waiting for an extension on your residence permit, you could be labelled an “overstayer”, which can cause issues entering other countries, as well as applying for a visa or residence permit in the future.

The Migration Agency told The Local that “a visa-free person’s allowance of visa-free days is not used up during the period in which the extension permit is being processed”.

“However, an extension application usually requires the individual to be located in Sweden,” the Agency wrote. “Travelling abroad can, in some cases, have an effect on the decision whether to extend a residence permit or not, in a way which is negative for the applicant, but this decision is made on an individual case basis (it’s not possible to say a general rule).”

“The right to travel into the Schengen area for short visits is not affected, as long as the person still has visa-free days left.”

Does this apply to me if I have a permanent residence permit?

No. This only applies to people in Sweden holding temporary residence permits. If you have a permanent residence permit and your residence permit card (uppehållstillståndskort or UT-kort) expires, you just need to book an appointment at the Migration Agency to have your picture and fingerprints taken for a new card.

How long is the processing time for residence permit renewals?

It varies. For people renewing a residence permit to live with someone in Sweden, for example, the Migration Agency stated in January 2024 that 75 percent of recent cases received an answer within eight months.

For work permit extensions, it varies. Although for those branches listed on the Migration Agency’s website, 75 percent of applicants received a response after 20 months.

This means that some people waiting to extend their residence permits could be discouraged from leaving Sweden for almost a year and a half, unless they are facing “exceptional circumstances”.

You can see how long it is likely to take in your case here.

Member comments

  1. There really needs to be a temporary card or something to be able to go in and out of the country for when the person is waiting for the renewal. Germany does it, and so do other countries, hoping that Sweden can offer this option as well.

    Also, you can always send a request to conclude case after 4 months if it’s a work permit extension or after 6 months if it’s any other kind of residence permit.

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

WORKING IN SWEDEN

Half of those blocked by Sweden’s work permit salary threshold will be graduates

A new analysis by the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise has found that 51 percent of the labour migrants likely to be blocked by a new higher salary threshold will be graduates. Karin Johansson, the organisation's Deputy Director General, told The Local how this will hurt businesses.

Published: 22 April 2024 14:21 CEST
Half of those blocked by Sweden's work permit salary threshold will be graduates

When Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard received the results of a government inquiry into setting the median salary as the threshold for new work permits, she said that highly qualified foreign workers would not be affected. 

“This is an important step in our work to tighten requirements for low-qualified labour migrants and at the same time to liberalise and improve the rules for highly qualified labour migration,” she said. “Sweden should be an attractive country for highly qualified workers.” 

But according to the confederation’s new analysis, published last week, graduates will in fact make up the majority of those blocked from coming to Sweden, if the government increases the minimum salary to be eligible for a work permit to 34,200 kronor a month from the 27,400 kronor a month threshold which came into force last November. 

“The politicians’ argument does not hold up,” Johansson told The Local. “More than 50 percent of those who have this kind of salary are skilled workers with a graduate background. These are the people that that the government has said that they really want to have in Sweden. So we are a little bit surprised that they are still going to implement this higher salary threshold.” 

Of those earning between 80 percent of the median salary (27,360 kronor) and the median salary (34,200 kronor), the study found that 30 percent were working in jobs that required “extended, university-level competence”, and a further 21 percent in jobs requiring “university-level education or higher”. 

“They are technicians and engineers, and many of the others are also really skilled workers that are hard to find on the Swedish labour market at the moment,” Johansson said. 

The proposals made by inquiry were put out for consultation in February, with the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise planning to submit its response later this week. 

Johansson said that further raising the threshold risked exacerbating the serious labour shortage already suffered by Swedish companies. 

"In our recruitment survey, we have discovered that 30 percent of all planned hires never get made because companies cannot find the right people," she said. "Many companies are simply having to say 'no' to businesses. They can't expand. So, of course, it will have an impact on the Swedish economy if they now increase the salary threshold. We know that there will be fewer people coming from abroad to work in Sweden." 

Johansson said she had little faith in the exemption system proposed by the inquiry, under which the the Swedish Public Employment Service will draw up a list of proposed job descriptions or professions to be exempted, with the Migration Agency then vetting the list before sending it on to the government for a final decision. 

"The decision of who will be exempted will be in some way a political one, and in our experience, it's the companies that know best what kind of people they need," she said. "So we are not in favour of that kind of solution. But, of course, it's better than nothing." 

She said that companies were already starting to lobby politicians to ensure that the skills and professions they need to source internationally will be on the list of exemptions, a lobbying effort she predicted would get only more intense if and when the new higher salary requirement comes into force next June.  

"If you have a regulation, not every company can have an exemption. You need to say 'no' sometimes, and that will be hard for companies to accept," she predicted. "And then they will lobby against the government, so it will be messy. Certainly, it will be messy." 

Although there are as yet no statistics showing the impact of raising the minimum salary for a work permit to 80 percent of the median salary last November, Johansson said that her members were already reporting that some of their foreign employees were not having their work permits renewed. 

"What we are hearing is that many of the contracts companies have with labour from third countries have not been prolonged and the workers have left," she said. 

Rather than hiring replacements in Sweden, as the government has hoped, many companies were instead reducing the scale of their operations, she said. 

"The final solution is to say 'no' to business and many companies are doing that," she said. "If you take restaurants, for example, you might have noticed that many have shortened their opening hours, they have changed the menus so it's easier with fewer people in the kitchen. And also shops, the service sector, they have fewer staff."

To give a specific example, she said that Woolpower, a company based in Östersund that makes thermal underwear, supplying the Swedish Armed Forces, had been struggling to recruit internationally. 

"They have seamstresses from more than 20 different countries and it's more or less impossible to find a seamstress in Sweden today," she said. "It's really hard for them to manage the situation at the moment and they are a huge supplier to Swedish defence." 

She said that the new restrictions on hiring internationally were also forcing existing employees and also company owners to work harder.  

"Current employees need to work longer hours than they have done and if you're a small business, you, as an owner, will work more than you have done before," she said. 

The best solution, she said, would be to abolish the salary thresholds and return to Sweden's former work permit system, which required that international hires receive the salary and other benefits required under collective bargaining agreements with unions. 

But she said that the government's reliance on the support of the Sweden Democrats party, enshrined in the Tidö Agreement, meant this was unlikely to happen. 

"This is the result of the Tidö Agreement, and you if you take away one single piece of this agreement, I think maybe everything will fall apart. So I think it's hard. When we discuss this with the different parties, they all agree that they want to push ahead with it. But it's the Sweden Democrats who put this on the table when they made their agreement." 

SHOW COMMENTS