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RESIDENCY PERMITS

EXPLAINED: What’s the best way to bring an ageing parent to Sweden?

Many people living and working in Sweden have one or more parents living back in their home country, often alone. What are the options if they need support or stop being able to care for themselves?

Published: 2 August 2023 15:36 CEST
EXPLAINED: What's the best way to bring an ageing parent to Sweden?
An elderly man with a Zimmer frame. Photo: Ali Lorestani/TT

Getting a temporary residence permit

According to Sweden’s Migration Agency, it is possible, although only “in exceptional circumstances”, for the parent of an adult from a non-EU country working in Sweden to get a residence permit to come and live with their adult child. 

Firstly, the adult working, studying or living in Sweden needs to have at least a permanent residence permit (unless they are a refugee, a person in need of subsidiary protection or have “a well-founded prospect of being granted a residence permit for a longer period). 

Secondly, the adult working in Sweden must be able to fully support their parent and show that they have a house or apartment of sufficient size. 

Thirdly, the parent needs to prove that they lived together with their adult child “immediately before [their] family member moved to Sweden”, and that they are “socially and emotionally dependent on each other”, making it “difficult to live apart”. 

This last requirement is too high a hurdle for most foreigners to pass. 

In countries where it is normal to live in a joint family, with three to four generations living under one roof, the child may well have lived with their parent until shortly before coming to work in Sweden. But if they have lived and worked in Sweden for too long without their parent, the Migration Agency will see this as evidence that their parent is not sufficiently emotionally dependent on them.

It is best to apply for a parent to come and join you as soon as possible after receiving permanent residency.   

If you have lived apart for too long, it is not usually enough for the Migration Agency for the child in Sweden to report that their parent is now suffering from health issues which require the care of the adult in Sweden. 

Getting a visitor permit for a year 

Sweden’s ‘visitor permit’ visa allows applicants who are “no longer professionally active and plan to visit their children and grandchildren for a longer time” to apply for a permit for up to one year.

If a parent comes to Sweden on such a permit, they are not entitled to any welfare benefits, so will need to take out a comprehensive medical travel insurance which will cover “emergency medical assistance, urgent hospital care or transport to your home country for medical reasons”, with the insurance covering at least €30,000 worth of costs.

If you are a citizen of an EU country 

If you are a citizen of an EU country, the rules are more lenient. Parents may stay with you for more than three months as your dependants, so long as they are either: 

  • seriously ill and need you to take care of them personally, or
  • economically dependent on you

If you are working, you need to show that you earn enough to support your parent. They also need to register with the Swedish Tax Agency within three months of arriving in Sweden. 

If your parent is a citizen of an EU country

If the parent is a citizen of an EU country and has retired, they have the right to live in Sweden if they can show that they have sufficient funds, or income from a pension, to support themselves, according to the Swedish Tax Agency. 

To do this they can provide a bank statement, a document showing that they have a pension, or a document from another person saying that they commit to supporting them, along with evidence that this person has sufficient funds or income. 

If they fulfil these requirements under EU law and can prove they intend to live in Sweden for a year or longer, they will be eligible to be registered in the Swedish population register, meaning they will receive a personal number, after which they will be eligible for healthcare at the same cost as for Swedish citizens.

How can a parent receive healthcare treatment in Sweden? 

Emergency healthcare

Everyone in Sweden has a right to so-called “emergency healthcare” if they are in Sweden on a temporary visit, and this also applies if the emergency is related to a chronic disease, as long as the recipient did not come to Sweden specifically in order to receive treatment.

If a parent comes from an EU, EEA, or EFTA country, or from the UK, they have the right to receive emergency healthcare at the same cost as a Swedish citizen, although they will need to have a European Health Insurance Card to access this right. 

If the parent is from Australia, Algeria, Israel, Turkey, or Quebec in Canada, they are covered by special agreements with Sweden which gives them the right to receive some forms of emergency health, such as care when giving birth, at the same cost as a Swedish citizen. 

If the parent is from another non-EU country, they will have to pay the full cost of any emergency healthcare. 

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POLITICS

How the Sweden Democrats’ ‘troll factory’ tries to shape the immigration debate

A Sweden Democrat 'troll factory' runs campaigns against its political opponents and collaborators, spreading videos faked with AI and posts depicting immigrants as violent, dangerous or stupid, the second part of a documentary series by broadcaster TV4 claims.

Published: 14 May 2024 14:19 CEST
How the Sweden Democrats' 'troll factory' tries to shape the immigration debate

“Their goal is to be on social media and in comments on all sorts of posts, to create an environment on social media where the Sweden Democrats and the conservative ideas appear bigger than they are,” Daniel Andersson, one of the reporters behind TV4’s Kalla Fakta programme’s documentary, told The Local.

Andersson spent nine months working undercover, first in the Sweden Democrats’ YouTube channel Riks and later for the party’s communications department.

Footage and information collected during his time working for the party has now formed the basis of a Kalla Fakta series on the so-called troll factory, which the Sweden Democrats had previously denied the existence of.

In the most recent episode, Kalla Fakta reveals a total of 23 different anonymous accounts spread across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, which are all run by the Sweden Democrats. These accounts have a combined 260,000 followers and published roughly 1,000 posts in the first three months of the year, which were viewed over 27 million times.

The accounts specifically try to target younger audiences in order to influence them early on in life.

“The head of the communications department Joakim Wallerstein told me on my first day there that he had a vision of how to change people’s minds,” Andersson said. “And he said that it’s a process which starts early in life, and that’s why it’s important on social media to reach a young audience.”

What are the posts about?

The posts produced by the accounts are for the most part memes – images, videos or text with the aim of being funny or entertaining. In some of these posts, immigrants are depicted as violent or dangerous.

In one clip, the party’s leader Jimmie Åkesson is shown pasted into a video as the driver of a tank letting off fire in Rinkeby in northwest Stockholm, an area with a large immigrant population. 

Others compare Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar to Joseph Stalin, or edit speeches by Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson so say things like “we can crush the whole country, together we can destroy Sweden”.

The clips also make fun of all three of the party’s coalition partners – the Moderates, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats – despite the fact that the four parties’ coalition agreement states that they should not attack each other.

In one clip, Wallerstein tells the group of troll factory workers to “find shit” on the Christian Democrats’ top candidate for the EU parliament, Alice Teodorescu Måwe, while others make fun of Liberal leader Johan Pehrson. 

In footage obtained by Daniel Andersson, one of the employees in the troll factory discusses what type of music to use when he should “shit on” the Moderates.

How have the political parties reacted?

Sweden’s prime minister, Moderate leader Ulf Kristersson, told TT newswire that he “expects serious answers” from the Sweden Democrats, describing troll accounts as “truly dangerous”.

“I expect them to show us what they’ve done and apologise if they have smeared others. I expect nothing less than that,” he added.

“It undermines public confidence and risks undermining public confidence in politics more broadly,” he added.

Liberal leader Johan Pehrson described Kalla Fakta’s findings as “unacceptable”.

“Disinformation and internet hate is extremely serious,” he said. “The Sweden Democrats need to explain immediately how they plan to stop this group’s activities. Jimmie Åkesson needs to answer the media’s questions and the parties’ party secretaries must discuss how we can move forward on this issue.”

Centre Party leader Muharrem Demirok, who has sat on the national security council alongside Sweden Democrats and discussed the dangers of influence campaigns on Sweden’s democracy, described the party as a “trojan horse” in these discussions.

“They have said that they take this issue seriously, just to go home and let their keyboard warriors loose on political friends and enemies,” he added.

What have the Sweden Democrats said?

In a six minute long YouTube video titled ‘Jimmie Åkesson’s speech to the nation’, Åkesson hit back at Kalla Fakta’s investigation, calling it a “gigantic domestic influence operation” against his party in the run-up to the EU elections.

“As usual, we are seeing uninhibited campaign journalism in the news and in ‘so-called’ investigative TV programmes,” he said, while referring to Kalla Fakta’s reports indirectly as a “home-made smear campaign often with no base in fact”.

“With careful manipulation, secret filming and extreme dramatisation, they have over the last week tried to prove that we, the Sweden Democrats, are spreading disinformation and a false image of reality. The only thing they’ve managed to prove is how they have done exactly what they accuse us of themselves. They are engaging in true disinformation.”

Back in 2022, the Sweden Democrats were accused of running a “troll factory” by left-wing newspaper Dagens ETC. At the time, the party rejected the accusations, calling ETC’s article “unserious and obvious activism” in an email to SVT, while admitting that a group called Battlefield, responsible for moderating the party’s comments boxes on social media, did exist at one point.

In the previous Kalla Fakta programme and in another interview with Dagens ETC, Wallerstein admits that anonymous accounts exist, although he rejects the term “troll factory”.

“I don’t think I’ve been running so called troll sites, for the simple reason that I haven’t been spreading false information,” he told Kalla Fakta.

Reporter Daniel Andersson believes this is nothing more than damage control from the party.

“He doesn’t want to acknowledge that it is a troll factory. He doesn’t see a problem with the fact that they are anonymous, or the fact that the connection to the party is hidden,” Andersson said.

The party has rejected Kalla Fakta’s request for interview.

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