Inside Sweden: If you want citizenship to mean something, this is not how to do it
The Local's deputy editor Becky Waterton rounds up the biggest stories of the week in our Inside Sweden newsletter.
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Anyone who has been following our work here at The Local will undoubtedly know that I, along with more than 88,000 others, have a pending application for Swedish citizenship.
It's impossible to be sure, but from what I can tell, my citizenship application is in the final stages. The Migration Agency asked for my passport and permanent residency card at the end of April. I sent them both in and my passport was sent back a few days later. As far as I'm aware, this means that they expect to approve my application – otherwise they would have sent my card back, too.
I've only been waiting since September last year, and I'm lucky that my case is relatively straightforward. I come from a stable country, I have an accepted form of ID, and I've had a full time, permanent job for the past few years.
Despite my relatively short wait, I think about my citizenship application all the time.
I check my emails constantly for updates. I've spent hours in citizenship-related Facebook groups and subreddits, googling different combinations of search terms to try and figure out when people who seem to have a similar case to mine were granted citizenship.
I've logged in to the Migration Agency website so often – even though they wouldn't update anything there without also sending me an email – that my browser has started suggesting it as a shortcut when I open a new window.
You could probably classify my behaviour as obsessive.
This week, The Local broke the story that the Migration Agency was only able to approve six applications for citizenship through naturalisation in April, because they've been ordered to carry out in-person identity checks for all applicants, but have no system in place to do so.
That's a decrease of 99.8 percent on the 3,234 applications approved in March.
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The 88,000 of us that are waiting for their applications to be approved have never been informed of this, never been told that our applications have essentially been put on pause with no clear date on which they will be resumed.
A few years ago, delays in passport processing – at one point the closest appointments were six months away – made headlines, with Swedes complaining that they'd had to miss out on their summer trips to Thailand.
For those of us waiting for citizenship, six months is nothing. Many of us were stuck in the country for longer than that while we waited for the Migration Agency to renew our residency permits. Some people have been waiting for years.
A six month delay for passport renewals caused uproar. But a citizenship delay, on top of already long waiting times? You could hear a pin drop.
Now that the agency has my permanent residency card, I don't even know if I can nip over to Denmark for a day trip without it. Will I miss the family reunion I have planned for the UK in July? That wedding in September? Those concert tickets for London in February? Can I leave Sweden to go back to the UK and renew my daughter's British passport next summer? And I'm lucky enough to have a job where I don't have to travel.
Swedish politicians keep saying that they're tightening up the rules because 'citizenship should mean something', but I don't think they understand that anyone who has gone through this waiting game understands that perfectly well. We don't just risk missing a summer getaway to Thailand, we have to plan our entire lives around our ongoing citizenship applications.
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Citizenship is the only thing we can think about. For the government, it's a bargaining chip they can use to make it look like they're tough on immigration, withholding it from people who meet all the requirements until they manage to change the rules so we don't qualify anymore.
We meet the requirements. We've lived here long enough, we've paid the fee. Changing the rules to delay citizenship and try to take it away from us cheapens it, and shows that you have no idea how much it means to us.
If you want citizenship to mean something, this is not the way you do it.
You can hear me and my colleagues go into more detail on the citizenship freeze in this week's Sweden in Focus podcast.
In other news
Police in Sweden said in a press conference on Friday that there was no indication the gunman behind the Örebro campus attack in February held "xenophobic or radical views" and that he likely chose his victims at random.
In a new report, the Swedish Association of University Teachers and Researchers (SULF) has slammed the government's 'exploitative revolving door' migration policy, arguing that it harms international researchers and denies them stability in the country.
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Proposed new rules could lead to a sixfold increase in the number of foreigners sentenced to deportation for committing crimes in Sweden, a government-commissioned inquiry believes.
GAMES: Have you tried The Local's games for Membership+ subscribers yet? We've got a new crossword and word search puzzle out now
The Eurovision final is set to take place on Saturday night. Groans and giggles typically greet voters at the contest, loved and mocked for its kitsch music and seemingly partisan outcomes. But what are the voting patterns, and what external factors help explain them?
The Geological Survey of Sweden (SGU) has warned that large parts of southern Sweden are at risk of a groundwater shortage after a particularly dry autumn and spring. What does this mean, and how can you prepare for it?
A new report from Public Housing Sweden has shown that waiting times for first-hand rentals in Stockholm county are the longest in the country, at over 28 years ‒ that's more than four times as long as the next-highest region.
The same report revealed that while some areas have long queues, others have empty apartments ready to move into straight away.
Finally, we have another My Swedish Career interview, this time with Syrian-Swedish journalist and filmmaker Jamil Walli, who moved to Sweden in 2013 as an exchange student, later moving into filmmaking. We spoke to him about his life in Sweden, as well as how the attitude towards immigrants has changed since he first arrived.
Have a good weekend,
Becky Waterton
Deputy Editor, The Local Sweden
Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members which gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It's published each Saturday and with Membership+ you can also receive it directly to your inbox.
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