What’s happened?

The Migration Agency on September 4th announced that it had submitted a report detailing the final plans of the new work permit system to the government, and would now begin work to implement it by the start of next year.

The new system would among other things scrap the current fast-track for certified companies, with an aim to slash processing times for highly-educated applicants to just 30 days.

“A 30-day processing time fits well with international comparisons of how long similar permit processes take,” Migration Agency regional director for the southern region, Fredrik Bengtsson, wrote in a statement.

“We’re expecting to be ready to launch the full model at the beginning of next year.”

Why is Sweden’s Migration Agency scrapping its old system for highly qualified labour? 

Mainly because work permits for highly qualified labour are taking too long to process. 

• IN NUMBERS: How long are waiting times at Sweden’s Migration Agency?

“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 back in May announcing the system. 

“We’ve unfortunately been dragged down by long processing times which have sometimes affected companies’ ability to compete.” 

The major projects currently being established in Norrland as part of Sweden’s green industrial transition also require international recruitment on a new scale, then-Director General of the Migration Agency, Mikael Ribbenvik added. 

“It’s battery companies, new steel plants, and not just in Norrland,” he said. “These are very important new projects for Sweden, and they very often require labour from third countries.”

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, has also stopped working. 

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. 

Ribbenvik said that of the 104,000 work permit related cases the agency received last year, 40 percent had come through the certification system, with 20 percent coming from industry sectors deemed as “high risk” by the agency. 

What’s the background to the decision? 

Sweden’s new government in December instructed the Migration Agency in 2023 to “promote highly qualified labour immigration to Sweden” as one of the core tasks given to it in its instructions for the year.

In an interview with The Local’s Sweden in Focus podcast, 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.

How is the system going to be changed? 

The certified system is going to be phased out, with the Migration Agency saying in a statement in September that it expected the new system to be ready by the end of the year. 

Instead, all work permit applications to bring highly qualified labour to Sweden, regardless of whether the company is certified or not, will be handled by new “international recruitment units”, or enheter för internationell rekrytering. 

These will not only process cases but will also include ‘service teams’, who will work closely with employers and businesses in the run-up to applications being submitted, so that they are complete. 

“We are going to provide a better service,” Ribbenvik said at the press conference in May. “We are going to be focused on the needs of business. We are going to communicate better on these issues together with business, and we are going to have special service teams which are going to support businesses and employees in establishing people in the country.”

The general idea is to shift attention from the employee applying for a permit to the Swedish businesses seeking to recruit them, and to take some of the jobs that agents such as EY or major companies’ in-house HR departments have carried out as part of the certified process inside the Migration Agency. 

“We’ve been very focused on the individual and we’ve seen businesses a little bit as something external,” Ribbenvik said. “And that’s something we want to reverse in our service, to give services to these companies so they can have an overall picture of the [people being recruited for] their new project.”

The Migration Agency says it will aim to handle “complete” applications to bring highly qualified labour to Sweden within 30 days.

Although this is lower than the 10 days for new applications and 20 days for renewals agreed under the certified process, Ribbenvik said it was “an improvement” on current actual handling times. 

“Our impression from discussions with businesses is that this is roughly equivalent to how quickly they need a decision,” he added. 

Which roles will be covered by the new international recruitment units? 

The Migration Agency plans to divide 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 and encompassed by the 30 day target. 

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 total, this covers 238 separate roles in the SSYK system.

How will the system treat applications in the other three categories? 

Category B. All applications for work permits in occupations with special rules will be grouped in Category B. These will include seasonal work such as berry pickers, country transfers within multinational companies, permits concerning holders of the EU Blue Card, artists, researchers, athletes/coaches, au-pairs, trainees, youth exchanges, and volunteers.

This category will also include people seeking a work permit to come to Sweden to start their own business, and (if it is not phased out beforehand) applications under the so-called spårbyte, or “track change system”, which allows people who have originally applied for asylum to apply for a work permit from within Sweden. 

Category D. This category will include work permit applications within industries that the Migration Agency sees as at a higher risk of abuse and so requiring more in-depth monitoring and investigation. These include cleaning, construction, and the hotel and restaurant industry. “I’m not saying all the companies in these branches have problems. There are decent companies, but the risk is greater,” Ribbenvik said at the press conference. 

Category C. This category will cover all other applications, so those which are neither for high qualified labour, nor in a high-risk industry, nor covered by special rules.

At the press conference, Ribbenvik stressed that Category C applications would also have access to the new service teams. 

“It’s important to understand that for many businesses it’s not just about people with university degrees,” he said. “If you’re setting up something big, you need all sorts of job descriptions, both high and low skilled, and even if we aren’t going to make any promises of 30 days for these people, we will work very closely with those setting up big projects in Sweden through these service teams.”