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Local Sweden
3 days ago
- Politics
- Local Sweden
'A good rate': Sweden carries out 3,500 in-person citizenship appointments
Sweden has carried out 3,501 in-person appointments for citizenship since the extra security checks began to take place in late May at the government's request. Advertisement "We have seen that bookings for in-person appointments are increasing at a good rate. We have capacity to accommodate more and we currently have no waiting times," Rebecka Paulusson, a spokesperson for the Swedish Migration Agency. "During the autumn, the pace is expected to increase further." In the months leading up to August 4th, 4,120 people have been sent letters inviting them to book an appointment for the checks, which are supposed to be the final stage of the citizenship application process, and the Migration Agency currently has 4,000 appointments available each month at its various offices around Sweden. Paulusson said that the agency at present did not know how rapidly those who attend the appointment are granted citizenship. "We don't have any data on this, but it is supposed to be fast," she said. The ID checks are part of Sweden's new security measures for citizenship applications, which were rolled out by the Migration Agency in April on the government's request. But because the routines for the appointments hadn't yet been set up by the time the new security checks came into effect, Sweden went almost two months without the agency being able to approve any citizenship through naturalisation cases at all. Advertisement In late May they finally got under way, with just over 2,000 appointment letters sent out to applicants by the end of June, indicating that it is currently sending out about 2,000 letters a month. READ ALSO: How many Swedish citizenship applicants have been called to in-person ID checks? Applicants have eight weeks from the date the letter is sent to book an appointment or contact the Migration Agency, otherwise they risk their application being denied. The letter is sent out by post once an applicant reaches the final stages of their citizenship application. The booking page is currently open to everyone, but only those who have received the letter inviting them to book a time slot should do so. READ ALSO: What's in the appointment letter for Swedish citizenship? The extra security checks, which also include applicants being sent an 11-page questionnaire with additional security questions, is the result of an order from the government and its far-right Sweden Democrat allies in January for the Migration Agency to take "forceful measures" to "as far as possible" prevent people who pose a threat to security or use a fake identity from being granted citizenship.
AFP
04-08-2025
- Politics
- AFP
Posts about Gazans migrating to Sweden misuse football squad footage
" reads an X post on July 15, 2025. "Swedes should think that to whom will these young men marry? It is obvious that these people will convert Swedish Christian girls and marry them. Sweden is already struggling with Islamic riots but Still the Swedes are not coming to their senses." It shares a video showing a group of youngsters wearing shirts bearing the colours of the Palestinian flag in a plane. Image Screenshot of the false X post taken July 18, 2025, with a red X added by AFP The armed group's 2023 attack, which sparked the war, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Youth football team The Swedish Migration Agency told AFP they could not confirm whether the video shows migrants being relocated to the country, but said a person cannot apply for protection outside Sweden. "It is not possible to apply for asylum before arriving in Sweden. You must be in Sweden or at the Swedish border," an agency spokesperson said on July 29. "Then it is the Swedish Migration Agency that examines the application and either grants protection or rejects it." The video was shared with similar claims on Facebook and X, but in fact shows a West Bank team flying to Sweden for football matches. A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the clip found Rawahel Charity -- a Palestinian sports association -- shared the clip on TikTok on July 11, 2025 (archived link). The Arabic-language caption reads, "To Sweden". Image Screenshot comparison of the false post video (L) and the TikTok video The Rawahel Charity has told AFP they were travelling only for football before going home. "We are a football team from Tulkarm in the West Bank. We were invited to participate first in a training camp in Paris, then in the world's largest children's football tournament, Gothia Cup in Sweden. We will then travel to Denmark to participate in the Dana Cup and then to Oslo to participate in the Norway Cup," a spokesperson for the group said on July 18, 2025. "We're not new to these tournaments; we were invited back after reaching the advanced stages last summer without any issues, and then we all returned to Palestine." Their trip can be seen on their social media pages and official websites of the games' organisers, including a Facebook picture posted on July 9 showing players in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (archived link). Mohamed Moulay, a regional councillor in Centre-Val de Loire in northern France, uploaded a picture with the team while they were in the country (archived here and here). They then travelled to Sweden for Gothia Cup, winning all their games in the group stage but were beaten in the knockout stage, according to the organiser's website (archived here and here). The squad moved on to Denmark for the Dana Cup. They advanced to the semi-finals before they were knocked out by the Minerva Academy, which posted a picture of the game with the Palestinian side (archived here and here). The team went on to compete in the Norway Cup, where the team was again beaten by the Minerva Academy in the knockout stage (archived link). The organiser also uploaded a clip showing the team's arrival in Norway (archived link). The team posted a picture on their Instagram account on August 3 showing them leaving Europe after finishing the games (archived link). AFP has previously debunked misinformation about the Israel-Gaza war here.
Local Sweden
24-07-2025
- Local Sweden
Swedish Migration Agency rates just two jobs as 'high risk' for work permits
The Swedish Migration Agency has rated two job titles – cooks and pantry chefs, and cleaners – as high risk for work permits, saying it doesn't have enough data to include other professions that are also known as being at risk of abuse. Advertisement The agency was requested in February to provide the list of job titles which could be excused a future new salary threshold for work permits, and also asked to propose a list of job titles for which it should not be possible to get work permits, due to the "great risk of exploitation and abuse". Although the cleaning, hotel and restaurant, construction, temping, retail, agricultural, car repair, and personal assistance sectors are all seen as at high risk of abuse, the agency said in its report that "methodological difficulties" meant it lacked sufficient data to back work permit bans for more job titles. "It's only for two job descriptions that we that we have the numbers required to draw any conclusions, and that's then cleaners and also cooks and pantry chefs," Hanna Geurtsen, the official leading the agency's mission to make work permit processing more efficient, told The Local. In its report, the agency said that the inquiry into work permits had already suggested that berry pickers and personal assistants should be ineligible for permits, although it noted that "berry picker" was bundled together with "planter" in SSYK, Sweden's list of 429 job titles. Geurtsen said that the agency had used six criteria to establish which job titles were at risk of abuse or exploitation. Advertisement "We normally talk about sectors in the employment market where we see see a higher risk of exploitation and it's also usually connected to the individual employer. So if an employer has a number of job titles in their factory or restaurant, which of those job titles is most prone to risk here?" she explained. "So to establish any connection at all between 'risk of exploitation' and and job titles, we had to dig quite deep into the data that we have then from processing applications for work permits." She also stressed that there were as yet no guidelines in place on how to balance employers' need for skilled workers and the risk of exploitation, and that the Migration Agency itself lacks a legal mandate to propose that certain job titles be banned from work permits, making the list of two – or four if including berry pickers and personal assistants – job titles purely advisory. "The work on the assignment has been associated with several challenges linked to concepts that are not accepted in the Swedish labour market," the report reads. "A large part of the work has therefore been to develop and describe the method and analysis." The agency based its list on the 152 job titles provided to it by the Swedish Public Employment Service on May 30th, which as The Local reported last week included all those paying below the median salary where employers were struggling to recruit nationally. Of those, the Migration Agency reported that Swedish employers had only recruited internationally over the past few years for about 90 job titles. It opted, however, not to slim the list down to 90 titles on the grounds that employers should not be limited in how they can recruit in future from which job titles they have recruited for in the past. Advertisement "It would be unwise not to exempt a job title from a heightened salary threshold just because in the past, there have not been any applications within that field," Geurtsen said. "We want to encourage employers to explore this way of finding the competence that they need to expand and to grow."
Local Sweden
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Local Sweden
Iranians stuck in Sweden rush to extend temporary visas and permits
The Swedish Migration Agency (Migrationsverket) has received a flood of applications from Iranian citizens hoping to get their temporary visas extended. Advertisement The night before June 13th Israel launched a series of attacks on Iran. The day after the Swedish Migration Agency labelled it a 'special incident' – a term used when a public authority sets up a special task force to deal with unexpected or major incidents. 'Iranians started to contact us about their visas and expired residence permits,' Migration Agency departmental head Sara Åhman told the TT news agency. The western, northern and southern parts of Iranian airspace closed as a result of the current conflict. The international airport in Tehran also closed, which means Iranian nationals in Sweden have had little choice but to try to find a way to stay put. They include, for example, Iranians who are in Sweden as tourists, visiting family in Sweden or who are in the country to study or work, with a permit set to expire. Advertisement Last year, the Migration Agency made a decision on (and approved) 31 visa extensions for Iranian citizens. In the past two weeks alone they have processed 28 such cases. And last year 157 cases regarding residence permit extensions for Iranian visitors were processed. In the past two weeks the agency has processed 30 such applications. 'It's not a huge number of cases, but the figures would not have looked like this if the situation around the world looked different,' said Åhman.
Local Sweden
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Local Sweden
Swedish Migration Agency ends citizenship freeze and launches ID checks
The Swedish Migration Agency (Migrationsverket) has begun contacting citizenship applicants to book in-person identity checks, effectively ending a near two-month freeze on approvals for standard naturalisation cases. Advertisement In a post published Thursday, the agency announced that letters were now being sent to applicants, marking the start of the final step in the citizenship process - a newly introduced 'personal appearance' requirement. Applicants will not be able to book appointments until they receive the official notification by post. "When you have received the letter, you should book a personal visit with us to verify your identity. This is called a 'personal appearance'," the agency wrote. "The requirement for a personal appearance applies to both those who are applying for Swedish citizenship now and those who have already applied and are waiting for a decision." READ ALSO: Eight questions to understand Sweden's citizenship freeze The agency told The Local earlier this month that approvals for citizenship by naturalisation - the most common route - had been on hold since April 1st awaiting a final decision on the routines regulating the system of in-person identification, a key part of new security checks the right-wing government coalition ordered in January. Mats Rosenqvist, section head for the Migration Agency, told The Local last week that everything was ready in practical terms, and that his team was just waiting for the director general, Maria Mindhammar, to sign the directive enabling them to launch the new process. Advertisement The directive was necessary to give the Migration Agency the legal right to ask applicants to come to one of their offices in person to show their ID – and to give the agency the power to, for example, reject the application of a person who fails to show up. Now these legal requirements are in place, the agency will begin to invite applicants to 'personal appearances' at offices around Sweden. The Local understands that citizenship applicants will be able to attend at any one of the eight offices carrying out the service around Sweden. Applicants who are not resident in Sweden can instead present themselves at a Swedish embassy or consulate. The Migration Agency has recruited extra staff and already set up the teams who will carry out the in-person identification checks. The checks will be one of the final stages of the processing of an application, and at first, everyone will have to do it without any exceptions. It was initially reported that certain nationalities with biometric passports would be exempt and would instead be able to confirm their identity digitally via the Freja app, but the technological solution for that isn't yet in place, Rosenqvist told The Local. Advertisement This means all applicants will initially need to make a personal appearance before they can be granted citizenship. The extra stage in the process is the result of an order from the government and its far-right Sweden Democrat allies in January for the agency to take "forceful measures" to "as far as possible" prevent people who pose a threat to security or use a fake identity from being granted citizenship. Experts had previously guessed that security checks would be tightened as a pretext of slowing down the awarding of new citizenships until stricter rules are in place in 2026 – a slowdown strongly hinted at by the government in an opinion piece in the DN newspaper in November. Forssell has since denied that the underlying intention is to slow down citizenship applications, telling TT newswire that the point was only "to prevent people who pose a threat to security from being granted Swedish citizenship".
