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WORK PERMITS

Black market in Swedish work permits ‘booming’

Non-Europeans hoping to come to Sweden to work often pay ten thousands of kronor to come to the country, in what is believed to be a widespread illegal trade with work permits.

Published: 9 December 2011 10:37 CET

According to Sveriges Radio (SR) the illegal trade in Swedish work permits today is booming.

Those who want to come to Sweden to work pay up to 100,000 kronor ($14,729) for travel expenses and a valid work permit.

The money is then shared by recruiters, Swedish employers and legal firms, handling the applications.

One lawyer claimed to have been approached by at least ten or fifteen people who said they had been promised work permits but never received them.

The money, they said, had gone to the lawyer’s superiors.

“In most cases they said they’d paid 50,000 or even 100,000 kronor,” the lawyer, told SR.

And most of the jobs only exists on paper. Those who have been granted a work permit will show up in the books of a company, without ever actually working there.

However, in order for the tax authorities not to notice anything untoward, the person is forced to pay their alleged employers their tax out of their own pocket.

In order to be able to do that they have to find work somewhere else, often cash-in-hand.

Alejandro Firpo at the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket), said that the agency is aware of this practice and is working closely with police to try to combat it.

“What makes it extra hard is that when people are ready to pay instead of being paid, they are also willing to pay these fees for the tax agency. So when the police or someone else tip us off, we conduct checks. And these look good. It looks as if the person has been working and paid tax to the tax agency. Which leaves authorities like us quite unable to do anything,“ Firpo told SR.

The rules were changed in 2008, making it possible for non-European citizens to get a temporary work and residence permit in Sweden, if they can show that they have secured a job within the country.

If one works in Sweden for four years, that person is then eligible for a permanent residence permit.

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EXPLAINED: What do we know about Sweden's new work permit bill?

What is the new bill and where does it come from?

The new bill, called “A higher subsistence requirement for labour migrants” (Ett höjt försörjningskrav för arbetskraftsinvandrare), was formally proposed by the former Social Democrat government on September 6th after discussions in the social insurance committee.

The Social Democrat government on February 6th appointed the judge Anita Linder to carry out an inquiry into “improved labour migration”, which was then sent out for consultation and discussed in the parliament’s social affairs committee, before the government submitted the proposal to parliament.

What does the bill say?

The bill empowers the government to raise the maintenance requirement for work permit applicants from outside the EU, the Nordic countries and Switzerland above the current 13,000 kronor a month.

The bill does not specifically state how much higher the maintenance requirement should be, or propose a date for when the changes should come into force.

In the proposal, it states that the new law can be implemented on “the day the government decides”. The new threshold, meanwhile, is to be set by a government directive which is supposed to be issued at the same time the law comes into force.

How high is the new maintenance threshold likely to be?

It’s not yet clear. However, the government may choose to follow the Tidö Agreement through which the far-right Sweden Democrats and the three government parties (the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals) agreed to back Moderate leader Ulf Kristersson as prime minister.

In this agreement the parties agreed to set the minimum salary for work permits to be awarded at the median salary in Sweden, which is about 33,000 kronor a month.

This is a compromise between the 35,000 kronor minimum salary put forward by the Sweden Democrats and the Christian Democrats, and the proposals from the Moderates and Social Democrats, who wanted to set the rate at 85 percent of the median salary (about 27,540 a month) and the Social Democrats, who have floated a minimum salary of about 27,000 kronor.

In an interview with Radio Sweden on December 3rd, Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard stated that the 33,000 kronor a month limit was not yet set, and that the government would “look into the exact amount”. She also stated that the government “will also be able to make exceptions for some individual professional groups,” although she did not go into detail on which groups this would include.

The Centre Party and the Liberal Party were both against the proposal in the run-up to September’s general election, arguing that Sweden’s existing liberal labour migration laws have been economically beneficial.

The Liberals are likely to respect the Tidö Agreement now they are part of the government.

READ ALSO: How do Sweden’s political parties want to reform work permits?

Who is against raising the salary threshold?

The Centre Party has been the biggest opponent in parliament, arguing that the hotel, restaurant and retail industries in particular will struggle to find staff if they are not able to hire workers internationally.

Martin Ådahl, the party’s economics and business spokesperson, told The Local his party was opposed on both practical and principled grounds to the proposal.

“It is clear in practical terms that many businesses rely on persons from abroad that have qualifications which lead to more growth and jobs in Sweden,” he said. “This is dependent on people starting with reasonable wages because they are new and don’t speak the language. It’s a loss for both Sweden and the individuals.”

But he said the party’s liberal ideology also made supporting the proposal impossible.

“On principle, it is wrong that authorities and boards staffed by public officials should tell businesses which talents they should hire at what wages,” he said. “This kind of wage regulation and minimum wages is something Sweden is opposed to otherwise.”

A lot of criticism has also come from business. Ann Öberg, the chief executive of Almega, a trade body representing businesses in the IT, telecoms, engineering, architecture, media, private healthcare, train operations, and security industries, wrote an opinion piece in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper at the end of October criticising the move.

She argued that it was unrealistic to expect unemployed people already living in Sweden to fill the gap created when low-skilled labour migrants can no longer come to the country.

READ ALSO: Swedish businesses attack work permit threshold

This article was originally published in November 2022 and updated following Malmer Stenergard’s comments in December 2022.

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