The US national reached out to other highly skilled software professionals asking them to sign a joint letter condemning Sweden's new law tightening citizenship requirements, which he hopes to send in as a submission to the consultation on the law.
"I've been very surprised and pleased at the volume of signatures that we've received and the feeling behind it," he told The Local. "We're at a little over 130 signatures right now, which is way more than I expected, because I'm not broadcasting this. This is just going through the whisper networks of immigrants in tech in Sweden."
He said it had been important to him that the letter only be signed by highly skilled tech workers as this, he believes, will increase its impact.
"People who are not highly skilled labourers, quote unquote, have come to me and asked, 'could we open this up to everyone?' which is understandable. But I really wanted this letter to be focused on high-skilled labourers and tech workers, purely to get the attention of the government."
"I think if it were a little bit broader, it would be much easier for the migration minister to dismiss the feedback and be like, 'well, naturally, immigrants are going to oppose this tightening'."
He said he had tried to get people in senior positions, some of them director level, and also to get signatures from AI-focused people, founders and CEOs.
"I've seen some of those job roles come in, so I think it's going to look good," he said.
The letter, which you can read here, argues that Sweden's current five-year residency requirement for citizenship has been "an invaluable differentiator in the competition for skilled foreign labor", and that extending the wait to eight or even nine years, would make Sweden much less attractive.
At the same time, the decision to apply the new rules retroactively, without transitional arrangements, would "substantially harm our relationship with the state", negatively affecting trust in Swedish institutions.
Peterson told The Local that he had been moved to gather signatures because "it didn't seem like anyone was really capturing or paying attention to" what he saw as a "general dissatisfaction" among his colleagues in the tech industry at the changes to citizenship and migration law.
When he read Migration Minister Johan Forssell claiming in The Local that high-skilled workers would not be deterred from coming to Sweden, he felt compelled to provide evidence to the contrary.
"I think you point blank asked him, 'do you think that these changes are going to have a negative impact on attracting foreign talent?', and he said, 'no, that's not what we're hearing'."
The goal of the letter, which Peterson intends to submit to the government's consultation is "to articulate opposition to the particular rules in a way that will, hopefully, catch the attention of the government by focusing it very narrowly on highly skilled workers".
He said the decision to apply the law retroactively was the "number one" issue angering highly skilled foreign workers in Sweden.
"All the people that I talked to who would be affected by this, and even those who have already gone through the process and wouldn't even be affected, feel like it's unfair that they came in under one set of rules and now they're going to be judged on this other set of rules. That's a big trust breaker, I think, and long-term I think it's going to contribute to a degradation of that trust in institutions that Sweden is so well known for."
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The second issue was the extension of the residency requirement from five to eight years, although he said he was "less hopeful" that this could be stopped.
Where he was hopeful, he said, was that highlighting the impact on Sweden's economy of these changes to citizenship would have more influence on the government.
"The hope is that by focusing on the economic impact to Sweden and its attractiveness abroad, we'll get some attention," he said.
He also hoped that the submission to the consultation would actually be read and have some influence on the process.
In the US, he said, writing to a Senator or Congressperson was "a futile task".
"When you do it, you're effectively just signing up for spam from their campaign," he joked.
"I think things feel different here in Sweden. I think from my perspective, there is some hope that the process will be followed, and the process here is, we're submitting feedback about a proposed law, and somebody's going to look at that. And I believe that the argument is fairly compelling, and hopefully something will come of it."
Eric Peterson was interviewed by Paul O'Mahony for the Sweden in Focus podcast. Text by Richard Orange.
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