The Local spoke to three of those affected, one who hopes to apply for LTR and two who already have it.
When Melissa’s husband Shane became eligible for permanent residency in 2025, their relocation advisers warned him not to apply. Doing so could have jeopardised their 18-year-old daughter’s right to stay in Sweden.
Instead, he renewed his work permit, a move that would allow the family to stay together until both Melissa and their daughter qualified for Long-Term Resident (LTR) status in 2026.
It seemed a neat solution until this month Sweden's government decided to push ahead with abolishing permanent residency for some immigrants, including LTR applicants.
If the law is passed and comes into force on July 12th, as seems certain, she and her daughter will no longer receive permanent residency, but instead get a five-year permit.
"It's been very stressful," said Melissa, who did not want to share her family's surnames. "I really worry about it for my daughter, because whenever there's a temporary permit – even if it's a five-year temporary permit – you never know what situation you're going to find yourself in."
In the law, the government envisages that as recipients of LTR status will have been in Sweden for ten years when their 5-year permit needs to be renewed, they will be able to apply for Swedish citizenship.
But Melissa was worried that her daughter might face issues nonetheless.
"What will her options be? After five years, will she have to go immediately from university to finding a job? Being thrown into uncertainty just feels unfair."
A worry for existing LTR holders
Two other foreigners The Local spoke to, both of whom work as software engineers, have already received permanent residency through LTR.
They will not be affected by the law scheduled to go before parliament on June 9th, but are worried about the second set of proposals made by the same inquiry, which would revoke permanent residency permits held by people who obtained them through LTR.
READ ALSO: Is Sweden's government still planning to revoke permanent residency permits?
The government put this proposal on hold in March after it was heavily criticised, with five of Sweden's highest legal authorities warning that it risked massive costs, would overwhelm the legal system, and contravened important legal principles.
The government parties have now given up, however. The proposal has been sent to the Justice Ministry, to be improved and augmented. Both the Sweden Democrats and the Christian Democrats want to then push ahead with a revised version if the government parties win September's election.
Chengkai Yang, a tech lead working for SEB Bank, said he and his wife had opted to apply for LTR back in 2023 when they tired of the then "ridiculously long waiting time" to get permanent residency through renewing his work permit.
"We had already reached the requirement for LTR and at that time for our goal was to get the permanent residency for both me and my wife, so it was like a different approach to the same goal."
They need permanent residency as quickly as possible so his wife could travel back and forth to China. LTR also made it easier to work in other EU countries and has a card that only has to be renewed every five years, compared to three for Swedish permanent residency.
When they got LTR, they were still waiting for the work permit decision, but the Migration Agency advised Yang to cancel his application, saying they would grant LTR, and as a result permanent residency, to their daughter, making it no longer necessary.
Three years later, he worries this was a mistake and that he should have waited to receive permanent residency through the work permit route.
"I do worry because we were told it was 'permanent' and now it might be something you need to renew every five years – and you never know, because I've noticed over the past couple of years how frequently the government changes their policies back and forth. That has actually frightened me a bit."
An American software engineer, who wished to remain anonymous, said that she had applied for LTR after a timing mistake led to her permanent residency application being rejected.
"They didn't tell me my permit was valid for the month before, so when I came around, they were like, 'oh, you can't get permanent residency because you're short one month'," she remembers.
As she had by that time been in Sweden for five years, she opted to take the LTR route instead. She is now waiting for a decision on her citizenship application, but is worried about what will happen if the next government pushes ahead with revoking existing permanent residency permits obtained through LTR.
If she had known that permanent residency obtained through LTR would be targeted, she says, she would have waited and applied for permanent residency on the basis of a work permit.
"But I had been here for six years and the job market was just so unpredictable, so I wanted to try to lock it in as soon as possible," she remembers.
"I filed for LTR in order to get a little bit more sense of security, but now, after hearing about the changes that they want to do, I'm like, 'oh, I think I kind of screwed myself over on this'."
Will abolishing pr through LTR affect Sweden's attractiveness?
In the draft bill sent to the Council on Legislation, the government acknowledged that some high-skilled workers who want to take the LTR route will be affected by the new law.
It judged, however, that this would not affect Sweden's attractiveness as a destination for high-skilled workers "to a significant extent", because of the "comparatively long duration" of an LTR permit. If they are eligible, it will also be possible for those seeking LTR to simultaneously apply for permanent residency through a work permit.
For Melissa and her daughter that's not an option, but even though it's not the tidy solution she hoped it was, she still intends to apply for LTR even after the new law comes into force.
"I mean any level of more stability is good – five years is better than two years, and after that I think my husband will be able to apply for permanent residency on his own."
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