Just two weeks on from a vote in Sweden’s parliament, migration ‘track changes’ have been abolished today, on April 1st, meaning those whose asylum applications are rejected can no longer remain in the country while applying for a separate work permit.
New legislation also means that approximately 4,700 rejected asylum applicants who have attempted to stay via other means now face deportation. Moderates Migration Minister Johan Forssell said that “special treatment that has existed will not remain.”
The nationalist Sweden Democrats (SD) party—which is working to resist border-destroying directives from Brussels—claimed this as a migration win, stressing that the change in the law must be followed by the removal of failed asylum applicants “for good.”
SD parliamentarian Nima Gholam Ali Pour added that while establishment figures are sharing “sob stories highlighting working people who are to be deported,” they ignore “the well-documented evidence that exists about how the track change resulted in widespread abuse of work permits.”
It undermines regulated immigration by turning a “no” into a “maybe”. From Tuesday, a no will mean a no, and there will no longer be any loopholes to get around a rejection.
Not that efforts won’t be made to undermine the change in the law. Already, the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket) is looking for “reasons not to enforce the expulsion[s].”
Hanna Geurtsen, who is the deputy project manager for work permits at the Board, has been particularly critical of the fact that
Without transitional rules, the new legislation will … have consequences for people who currently have a job and support themselves.
In the face of attempts to work around legislation, journalist Jan Sjunnesson urged SD to “stand your ground and the police can send them out!”
