Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

POLITICS

Swedish PM seeks to cut inflow of foreign workers

Sweden's prime minister wants to curb labour migration to the Scandinavian country to provide more jobs for its own unemployed, including refugees accepted in recent years.

Published: 24 February 2017 18:01 CET
Swedish PM seeks to cut inflow of foreign workers
Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven. Photo: Pontus Lundahl/TT

“Jobs that require little or no education will first be filled by the unemployed who are already in our country,” Social Democratic leader Stefan Löfven told reporters in Stockholm.

A country of almost ten million people, Sweden took in 244,000 asylum seekers in 2014 and 2015, the highest number per capita in Europe. Figures have since dropped to fewer than 30,000 in 2016, following tighter borders and asylum rules.

“It's unreasonable for us to have a labour migration that consists of dishwashers (and) restaurant employees when we have capable people who have arrived here as refugees,” Löfven added.

“The first thing we will do is to emphasize that everyone who can work will work,” the 59-year-old leader said as he presented the Social Democrats' programme for its party congress in April when it will lay the foundations for its 2018 election campaign.

Löfven said there were 100,000 jobs available in Sweden and some 300,000 jobless workers.

Around four percent of people in Sweden aged 15-29 were either unemployed or not attending school in 2016, according to Statistics Sweden.

The country granted work permits to more than 12,000 people from countries outside the EU in 2016.

This figure includes around 4,000 unskilled labourers such as cleaners, chefs, waiters and waitresses and mechanics, according to the Swedish migration board.

The Social Democrats run a minority government with the Green Party, which opposes the plan, making it unlikely for Sweden to restrict labour migration before the September 2018 election.

“If the Greens choose to dig their heels in and fight then there'll be a government crisis,” Jonas Hinnfors, a political science professor at the University of Gothenburg, told AFP.

“It's more likely that this will be a (Social Democratic) election promise instead of forcing the Greens to agree,” he said.

The Social Democrats have traditionally had a large working class voter base, and Löfven's comments were seen as an attempt to win over voters fleeing to the anti-immigration far-right Sweden Democrats.

According to a poll conducted between January 23rd and February 19th by public broadcaster SVT, the Sweden Democrats were the third-largest party behind the Social Democrats and the opposition conservative Moderates.

Article written by AFP

For members

WORK PERMITS

Is Sweden meeting its 30-day work permit target for high-skilled foreigners?

Three months after the Swedish Migration Agency rolled out a new system for work permits, how long are highly qualified foreign professionals having to wait for a decision?

Published: 3 May 2024 05:58 CEST
Updated: 3 May 2024 09:07 CEST
Is Sweden meeting its 30-day work permit target for high-skilled foreigners?

More than 7,750 work permit applications have been submitted to Sweden’s Migration Agency since a new system designed to speed up waiting times for skilled workers was implemented.

The new system, rolled out on January 29th, divides workers into four different categories depending on their profession. It was introduced after complaints about long waits for both first-time and renewed work permits and promised to process the top category, “A”, within 30 days.

Category A applications are those already classified as “highly qualified” under the Standard for Swedish Classification of Occupations (SSYK), and include leadership roles, roles requiring higher university education, and roles requiring university education or equivalent.

A Migration Agency spokesperson told The Local that a total of 95 percent of complete work permit applications sent in by highly qualified workers since January 29th were processed within 30 days, with a median handling time of 14 days, according to figures from April 15th.

“Our ambition is to decide cases for highly qualified labour within 30 days – sometimes it happens that the application isn’t complete and that can make the processing time longer,” the spokesperson said.

By mid-April, the Migration Agency had processed 4,461 complete applications, 550 incomplete applications and 423 applications for permanent residency which were complete but had to wait for a decision because the applicant’s previous permit hadn’t yet expired.

Around 77 percent of incomplete applications were processed within 30 days.

A Migration Agency spokesperson told The Local that there may be various reasons why an application is incomplete, but “common mistakes” include passports lacking a signature, incorrect information about accommodation when needed, no or not enough information about the applicant’s insurances, or no statement from the trade union about working conditions.

The spokesperson also said that the four percent of complete applications that didn’t get processed within a month were delayed because of, for example, the applicant failing to visit an embassy to show their passport before the deadline, having a criminal record in Sweden that required further investigation of their application, or the security police blocking their application.

SHOW COMMENTS