Since 2018, people who have been waiting for a decision on an application for Swedish citizenship, or a work or residence permit, for at least six months have the right to request an immediate decision from the Migration Agency.
But a decision is not guaranteed; the Migration Agency may also conclude it can't immediately make one.
Almost 100,000 requests for a fast decision have been submitted to the Migration Agency since 2018, and the Migration Agency says they have created a Catch-22.
"It's an increased administrative burden on us. It also means that we have to depart from our usual principle to prioritise the oldest cases and the most straightforward cases," Fredrik Söderberg Bruce, a spokesperson for the agency, told SVT.
Waiting times for citizenship applications have increased from 295 days in 2018 to 458 days this year, writes SVT – these are the average processing times, but individual processing times vary widely. The agency's goal is to cut the queues to six months, a level the agency predicts it will reach only by 2023, according to Söderberg Bruce.
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