In an interview with The Local in December, Douglas Thor, leader of Moderate Party youth wing MUF, criticised the government's failure to include a transition period when it abolished the spårbyte, or "track change" law back in April.
Just a few days after speaking to The Local, Thor appeared on commercial broadcaster TV4 to debate the issue with Sweden's Migration Minister and fellow Moderate, Johan Forssell.
"We want some transitional rules to cover the period before we apply this rule to new work permits," Thor told The Local. "For people who had asylum refused and have already applied for [or been granted] a work permit, there should be other rules so that we can live up to the promise that we gave to them ‒ that if they do what we want them to, do right for themselves, integrate and so on, that it's going to be rewarded."
The spårbyte law ceased to apply from April 1st, 2025, with no transitional period included when the government abolished the rule. This has meant that all former asylum seekers who obtained a permit to work in Sweden on the basis of the legislation are now barred from extending their work permits, even if their employer is willing to meet new salary requirements.
"There should have been transitional rules so that people who've done everything that we asked from them don't get deported," Thor said.
He added that obliging people to travel home to their countries and then apply for a work permit again was "not a way for Sweden to be a welcoming country for people who are here and already contributing".
In the debate on TV4, Forssell defended the way the track change rule had been abolished, arguing that the law had paved the way for widespread abuse and that those now barred from renewing their work permits could still apply for a new permit if they first return to their home countries.
"If you meet the requirements then you can still apply for a work permit in the future just like everyone else, but you then do it from your home country just like everyone else," he said. "I think we have to get away from these exceptions that have been piled up on top of each other."
Thor then hit back, arguing that this approach risks seeing the Moderate Party punish exactly the sort of hard-working people it is supposed to represent.
"It is absolutely right to send people home who commit crimes and who have not tried to apply themselves," he said. "But we should be on the side of those people who make an effort, and keep up their side of the bargain, and we are not living up to those words fully when we don't let these people stay."
Both in his interview for The Local and in the TV debate, Thor called for the government to cut the salary threshold for a work permit from today's level, which is just under 30,000 kronor a month, to about 25,000 kronor a month, rather than raising it as planned to 33,390 kronor next June.
In this, he said he believed he was backed by a large section of the Moderate Party, even if it was not an opinion currently being openly expressed by many MPs.
"I think that there's a big opinion in the party, and I think it could even be a majority, in favour of more liberal policies, at least for work permits," he told The Local. "But there's also a culture within the party that we back up our government, and our ministers have decided that this is the way, and therefore many people are supporting them in this decision."
There is a tradition in the Moderate Party, he added, of allowing the youth party to take a different position on some policies and lobby the mother party to change its approach.
"A great thing within the culture of the Moderate Party is the allowances they give the youth league," he said. "We get to focus on things that we think are wrong as a matter of principle, and also talk about things that we want to form the future of the party. Maybe this is not the way the party needs to go now, but in five years, who knows?"
In the short term, however, he said he was "not hopeful" about the prospects of lessening the impact of the government's work permit reforms, which he said also had the backing of the Social Democrats and Sweden's unions.
"I'm feeling a bit hopeless but I'm going to keep fighting for it because, when it comes down to it, we in the Moderate Party are all about people who do right for themselves, people working, people trying their best. They should get great lives and by deporting people who've done everything that we ask of them, we are literally sending the opposite message."
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