In an interview for The Local's Sweden in Focus podcast, the agency's outgoing Director General, Mikael Ribbenvik, said that so-called talent deportation or kompetensutvisning, a term referring to the phenomenon of the Swedish Migration Agency ordering highly-skilled foreign workers to leave the country due to minor administrative errors, was "a great word" that had never reflected reality.
"The truth was that when we looked at it the highly-skilled or certified cases that were in the papers, we were always at between 98 percent and 99 percent approval for extensions, so come on, if it was any higher, it would be everybody," he said. "This was a campaign. It was really good, it still exists, and it was totally wrong."
Ribbenvik said that the issue originally stemmed back to a court ruling from around 2015, when the Migration Court of Appeal had ruled that extensions should be denied even for minor failures to meet the conditions of employment, leading to a series of "silly" deportations.
"They basically said that since since these are minimum requirements, if you go under them, however slightly, you can't get an extension. So we implemented that – because we must, because that is the way the system works. And that led to these really silly cases."
However, it only took a few years for the Court of Appeal to correct its ruling, he continues, with a landmark ruling in 2017 stating that case officers should also look at the 'overall picture' and make assessment of whether the errors or shortcomings were likely to continue in future. As The Local reported back in 2020, the number of talent deportations fell sharply after the ruling.
Ribbenvik questioned whether the 'minor errors' victims complained about in talent deportation cases since the 2017 ruling had always been so minor.
"Part of this debate also contains the word bagatelle. I think it's French. It means it's like 'nothing', a trivial mistake," he said.
"But some of these things are not a bagatelle. Because if you don't have insurance, and if you get hurt, that's really not a bagatelle. First of all, it's not good for the individual. Second of all, who pays for things then? It's the taxpayers."
Even if some of the more recent cases seemed unfair, he continued, they were usually in line with the law, and his agency, he stressed, will always seek to apply the law, even in cases when to do so seems counterintuitive.
Swedes, he said, are "very loyal to legislation, even when the consequences are silly".
"It's very difficult - or impossible - to explain that in the individual case. On the aggregate level, everybody agrees. 'Should we follow the law? Yes, of course.' But when it comes to the individual cases it's 'have some reason here', or 'have a heart', or 'what if it was your kid?', or all these things."
"But all those things actually mean 'can you please not follow the law?' and we will never do that."
You can listen to part one of our interview with Ribbenvik here. Part two is available here.
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