Labor immigration
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
SD considers that a complete renovation of the regulatory framework is required to counter fraud and human trafficking 1. The party advocates for higher wage requirements to filter out jobs without education 1 and argues that higher wage thresholds are the only way to stop exploitation 2. SD argues that companies should be able to find staff within the EU 2. SD emphasizes that work permits must be applied for before arrival 3. S wants to re-establish means-tested labor immigration to protect full employment 4 and proposes discretion for regional wage differences 4. S wants trade union representatives to inspect workplaces 4. MP considers it unreasonable to deport persons who have worked and paid taxes 5 6.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Speakers (14)
Ludvig Aspling (SD)
Mr. Speaker! For the sake of clarity, I shall begin by saying that the order in which we work with these issues in the committee means that we are debating a motion report today. The Government's bill on the area lies on the floor of the Riksdag, but it will be debated separately later.
The proposals and the policy that I will highlight in the speech now concern matters that are in the government's bill. I want to clarify this if anyone wonders why the Sweden Democrats do not have any reservations in the report despite that we are talking about a lot of things that we intend to do.
Mr. Speaker! The complete overhaul of the regulatory framework for labor migration that is currently being carried out by the government and the Sverigedemokraterna is absolutely necessary. The rules we inherited from the Alliance's and the Socialdemokraternas time in power were completely absurdly naive in the face of the problems with fraud, abuse, and trafficking of both people and residence permits that have been obvious in Sweden for a long time. The problems are not entirely resolved yet, but we have come a good way.
The system we had meant that those people who are furthest from the labor market – whom the left-wing parties in particular pretend to care about – had extra difficulty asserting themselves because they in practice competed with low-wage labor from all over the world, and that unserious companies could obtain income and feed the black economy.
The system we had meant that the person who wanted to bring in a labor immigrant did not need to pay more than 13,000 kronor per month. That made it possible to bring in labor for practically any occupation, i.e., even occupations that require almost no or no education at all and no work experience whatsoever.
A consequence of this was that poor and sometimes quite desperate people from the world's least developed countries accepted to come to Sweden and work for free, often on completely unacceptable conditions and not infrequently for an employer who had roots in the same country. They accepted to do this for four years in order to subsequently be able to apply for permanent residence in Sweden and then resign and move from work to benefits.
Another common setup has been that a person who has a bit more money simply buys an employment contract in Sweden in order to be able to move here, a so-called sham employment through a labor-crime company.
Through a single regulatory framework, the Social Democrats and, to be fair, the bourgeois parties who pushed this system through from the very beginning succeeded in creating conditions for human trafficking, increasing subsidy dependence and exclusion, creating conditions for black incomes and corporate crime, and worsening the opportunities for other low-skilled migrants to compete on the Swedish labor market – and, in addition to this, naturally worsening the conditions for ordinary Swedish workers, who are pressured downwards when the supply of labor is in practice completely unlimited.
To top it all off, it now looks as if three of the four parties on the left side want to go back to the order that prevailed then, which would naturally be completely devastating.
The question then is: What is the government and the Sweden Democrats doing about this? We are attacking this problem in several ways. This year, we are raising the wage requirement in two steps, to 90 percent of the median wage – corresponding to approximately 34,000 kronor per month. In what way does that help against abuse? That is a question I am asked quite often. Well, through this increase, we simply filter out occupations that require short or no education, which constitute the groups where the risk of exploitation and sham employment is greatest. It is very unusual for companies that employ qualified engineers to cheat with residence permits or sell Swedish residence permits.
The practical effect of this can be seen already today, when the requirement is approximately 28,000 kronor per month. In 2022, approximately 700 work permits were granted for a professional group that in the Swedish Migration Agency's statistics is called cleaners and home service personnel etc., occupations that in principle do not require any education at all. We therefore brought in 700 such people in 2022. For 2025, the figure was 170, and for 2027, I hope the figure will be zero. As long as we have hundreds of thousands of semi-illiterates living on benefits in Sweden, it is completely absurd to bring in personnel from the other side of the planet to do jobs that do not require any education whatsoever. It is pure madness, and it is this that three out of four left-wing parties want to go back to.
We are also introducing a completely new wage requirement for persons who have a permit for seasonal employment. These persons are currently covered by the old wage requirement of 13,000 kronor per month. It will be raised to the minimum wage according to collective agreements in the relevant industry, which means an increase of around 10,000 kronor per month for a full-time employment.
We have also created an opportunity for the government to decree the complete exclusion of certain professional groups from labor migration. This concerns those groups where the risk of abuse has been most apparent.
One example is occupations within personal assistance, which depends on a phenomenon that is usually called user import and which has been very common in Sweden. User import is a kind of human trafficking with disabled persons who are imported to Sweden, often as relatives of labor migrants, to then become users in a work-life criminal assistance company. Not infrequently, however, these companies are more interested in the money than in actually performing any assistance, which has led to these persons then being left to their fate in an empty apartment in some marginalized area somewhere – extremely tragic.
How this could have continued and how it is possible that a normally functioning country has looked the other way year after year is a question that naturally must be posed to the Social Democrats. This is a phenomenon that became known primarily during their time in power. They did, however, exactly zero things to do anything about it.
We are introducing a requirement for comprehensive health insurance; it is not a requirement today. This applies to persons who stay in Sweden for such a short time that they are not covered by the regular health insurance that comes from being registered as a resident here in the country.
We are also introducing a rule that work permits shall be refused if the employer has been convicted of a crime according to the Aliens Act. This naturally primarily concerns persons who have been ordered to pay a special fee because they have been caught employing illegal persons. That we do not have such a rule today is, of course, completely absurd. If you employ illegal persons, it is reasonable to assume that the company is so unprofessional that it should not be allowed to recruit labor from third countries. It is completely obvious. Why we do not have such a rule today is another question that must be asked of parties other than my own.
We are also introducing two new criminal classifications, as a small bonus: exploitation of foreign labor and trafficking in work permits.
The first of these criminal classifications targets the situation that I described initially, where people are willing to work for free or on completely unacceptable terms in order to obtain a residence permit. In the new preparatory works, it is described as having a foreigner employed under obviously unreasonable conditions but without a requirement for the use of an improper means such as coercion, deception, or exploitation of the employee's situation.
The requirement of improper means is what applies to the crime of human trafficking, and that is why the new criminal classification is being introduced. The criminal classification of human trafficking is very difficult to apply in these situations, and it is precisely because of this requirement of impropriety, which is in principle impossible to prove unless the employee themselves is willing to testify in court. Since this is a setup that these employees unfortunately often accept, they simply do not want to testify, and therefore it is difficult to convict for human trafficking.
The second criminal classification, trading in work permits, targets the situation where a business owner in Sweden helps people obtain employment here in exchange for a fee that is not proportionate to the value of the service. The purpose is to address situations where people in practice sell residence permits through sham employment.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker: The total paralysis that prevailed at the Ministry of Justice in this area during the previous parliamentary term is obviously completely gone, because now things are suddenly happening. Rules that should have been introduced more than ten years ago and which Sweden desperately needs are now coming in rapid succession. Already now, at least I feel that we can look back on this parliamentary term with a great deal of pride.
Niels Paarup-Petersen (C)
Mr. Speaker! And thanks for last time to Member Aspling!
There was a lot of pride here. But we can also observe that there are those out in reality who do not quite agree on how fantastic this government is when it comes to the labor immigration. The business owners call the policy socio-economic idiocy. The Stockholm Chamber of Commerce is a bit more concise and content with just saying idiocy.
I can give an example. The company Bruzaholms was in Dagens industri yesterday, I believe it was. It is a foundry that has existed in Sweden since the 1660s. It was a bit of a special time in Småland, connected to the Danish and such. But they have at least been there since the 1660s. Now the government is undermining their operations by deporting their key competence, people who take seven years to train. They are now leaving the company because of the government's policy.
One might wonder a bit why it is so incredibly important to do such things and how it makes Sweden better. That is the big question, which we have not really been able to get answers to at the current moment.
Another question is why it is important to punish Jämtland more harshly than Stockholm. The member lives in the Stockholm region, and that can be nice. It can also be nice to live in Jämtland, Dalarna or Norrland – and also in Skåne, I can say.
I can only state that the median wage in, for example, Jämtland is much lower than in Stockholm. The wage for the same job is lower than in Stockholm. That is to say that the person who gets to stay if she works in Stockholm will be deported if she works in Jämtland, in Norrland, in Dalarna, on Gotland, and so on.
Why do you hate the rest of Sweden so much that you push through a Stockholm-based policy in this area? I don't understand that.
Ludvig Aspling (SD)
Mr. Speaker! To claim that we would hate Jämtland because the wage levels are generally a bit lower there, I think is reaching.
A wage requirement that is higher than what we had previously is absolutely necessary for us to address the problems with corruption and abuse of the rules that have been obvious in Sweden. I explained in my speech how people come from some of the world's poorest countries and allow themselves to be exploited. They work for free for four years to obtain permanent residence in Sweden, which naturally has a great economic value for them because they can then continue to live on benefits here. That system is completely unacceptable.
The only way to access this is to have a higher salary threshold. Unfortunately, there are no other good ways to access it.
That this subsequently disproportionately affects areas in Sweden where the median wage is lower is a consequence that cannot be avoided. It is simply impossible.
The member's argument is roughly like saying that the person who wants a high tax on fuels hates people who live in the countryside because they have lower incomes, so that it becomes proportionally more expensive to drive a car there. The argument is completely idiotic.
It would have been impossible to have a lower wage threshold for companies in certain places in the country.
Then we have the question of which workforce will arrive. If it takes seven years to train a person, it must be about a highly educated person. If the person has, therefore, worked for seven years and still has not reached the median wage, it must be about an area with quite low wages.
Then one must also ask whether it is truly impossible to find a person who works within the industry in the EU. I believe the member from Centerpartiet spoke about a metal foundry. Is it really impossible to find a person who can do this in the European Union, with over 500 million inhabitants? I do not think so.
I believe that these companies are actually very interested in a situation where they have a four-year probationary period. I believe that is what tickles them.
Niels Paarup-Petersen (C)
Mr. Speaker! This with the hate was perhaps a bit much to take in. I regret it.
The chairman says that it is impossible to avoid having a system that creates these effects, where one does not, therefore, take into account regional wage differences. In that case, I shall tell you about something called the Swedish model.
Collective agreements, which exist in Sweden and Nordic countries in general, are actually based on creating wage levels that are reasonable based on regional conditions. This means that the wages, as I pointed out just now, are lower in Jämtland, on Gotland etcetera than in Stockholm.
I, who am nevertheless relatively well-versed in the Swedish system, would like to say that there is something called collective agreements, and those could have been used instead. The government, however, chose not to do so, despite the fact that very many referral bodies warned against what the consequence would be and argued that one should utilize the Swedish model instead.
I believe that almost all business organizations and all unions said that one should have followed the Swedish model, where the parties reach an agreement on this. It is therefore not impossible, but on the contrary, very possible. It could have been done. We think it should be done. But instead, the Sverigedemokraterna chose a model that makes it so that Jämtland is punished more severely than Stockholm.
This was a deliberate choice. Norrbotten and Gotland are punished more severely than Stockholm. This is the government's policy. This has been done deliberately.
Why was it so important to have a model where Jämtland, Gotland, Norrland, Småland and so on are punished more harshly than Stockholm? No offense, but Stockholm is already relatively well off and already takes resources from the rest of the country in many cases. We do not need to give them better conditions in this area either.
Ludvig Aspling (SD)
Mr. Speaker! First and foremost, we have this with industrial workers who are coming to, for example, take jobs in Norrland. I am not entirely sure that it is true that the wages for an industrial worker are so much lower in Norrland compared to in Stockholm. Maybe it is so. I have not worked with wage-setting issues personally, so I cannot swear to it. But I would not believe that the difference is so great that it practically becomes impossible to recruit people there due to the wage threshold while it is possible in Stockholm. I simply believe that this is not true, but we can look at it in hindsight.
The Swedish model is something that our party stands behind, naturally, but the model applies to Sweden's labor market. Now, we are not actually talking about Sweden's labor market. The demand for labor is here, but the supply of labor is not here but is in practice global. It is those rules we are talking about.
Then the Swedish model does not work, but we need to have very clear and very distinct conditions. We shall not bring in people from the other side of the earth for them to work as cleaners or dishwashers or for that matter in other occupations with very low wages. The consequences of those rules become completely absurd. This is known by everyone who has followed this issue for a longer period of time.
Solving this via collective agreements might be possible in a technical sense, on some kind of theoretical plane. But then you would get a lot of companies cheating to access the lower levels by perhaps establishing a branch or in other ways trying to abuse the system to gain advantages. I therefore do not believe it is possible to carry out in practice, even if it were theoretically possible.
Annika Hirvonen (MP)
Mr. Speaker! I have two questions for Ludvig Aspling.
The first is why Ludvig Aspling thinks it is reasonable to have conditions in accordance with collective agreements as a basis when it concerns seasonal employment but not when it concerns all other jobs. We used to have a system that said a labor migrant should have a salary at the level of the collective agreements. The government obviously thinks that order works well for seasonal workers. We think it would be a good order also for employees in home care and workers in industrial occupations.
This would also solve the problems with the regional difference in wages and, honestly, also the regional difference regarding the demand for labor, which is enormous in northern Sweden. There, it is very difficult to find people who want to come and work, for example, in the welfare sector. There, many deportations have now been seen. In one department in Boden, every fourth employee has been deported.
The second question is whether the Sweden Democrats fundamentally stand behind the principle that those who behave, work, pay taxes and do right by others should be allowed to stay in Sweden. It is a principle that many in, for example, the Moderaterna have said they stand behind, but in politics we see that the government does not stand up for it when people who have already been in Sweden for many years are mass-deported. It is about people who work here, pay taxes and are a part of our societies.
Ludvig Aspling (SD)
Mr. Speaker! I will begin with what the member took up last in his reply.
The point that all people who work and pay tax should be allowed to settle in Sweden and that this should be a principle that certain parties adhere to simply does not hold up. Not even the Green Party itself adheres to it. There is, in fact, a small thing that I think Annika Hirvonen perhaps forgot.
Absolutely, one should work and pay tax. But one must also have a residence permit first. She talks about that all persons who work and pay tax should have the opportunity to settle in Sweden. There is no party that completely wants to deregulate the rules that apply for applications for work permits. There we have the very strong main rule that work permits must be applied for before one comes to Sweden.
Annika Hirvonen does not even know where her own party stands on this issue. I note, in fact, that there is no such proposal in this report from Miljöpartiet – isn't that right, Annika Hirvonen?
No, I do not agree that everyone who works and pays tax should be allowed to settle in Sweden. One must have a residence permit first. It is very, very simple. This is what has happened in these situations regarding the route-switchers – I suspect that is what Annika Hirvonen is talking about. They have not obtained a proper residence permit, but instead have received a time-limited residence permit through an exception rule that Sweden is completely unique in. There is no other country that has such a rule. Furthermore, it has received extremely much criticism from all the bodies investigating these matters. It should have been abolished a long time ago.
These people cannot have their time-limited permits extended. They have never received a promise to be allowed to stay in Sweden longer than the two years that most have been allowed to stay.
No, I have no problems at all with this. If they have employment that allows them to reach the salary requirement, they can go back to their home country and then apply for asylum again. None of these people have any protection needs, so it should be possible to arrange.
Annika Hirvonen (MP)
Mr. Speaker! We in Miljöpartiet think it is completely unreasonable to mass deport thousands of people who have worked in Sweden, with residence permits, paid taxes and contributed to our welfare – both through tax payments and, frankly, by having worked in the welfare sector. We think it is completely unreasonable.
It becomes even more unreasonable when one hears from Moderates and others that it should pay to do the right thing and that it should pay to work, just as these people have done.
Now we see how employees in home care, nursing assistants in hospitals and self-employed individuals in Norsjö and in other places are forced to sell their houses, their homes, and take the children out of school to travel to countries such as Iran or Afghanistan, which they once fled from. We can probably all understand that there are reasons not to want to go back there.
These people will also not, in all cases, with the policy the government is pursuing, have the opportunity to return to Sweden. The government will, in fact, raise the wage requirements so much that it will become almost impossible for many workers in manual occupations to reach them.
For me and for Miljöpartiet, this is a completely unreasonable policy. I also question how it aligns with the talk from many parties that it should pay off to do the right thing and behave, just as these people have done. But I note that Sverigedemokraterna do not think it is a principle that one should adhere to.
Ludvig Aspling (SD)
Mr. Speaker! I do not think that Annika Hirvonen really has a grip on the figures when she says that we are mass-importing nurses. There is not a single nurse among the persons who have been granted residence permits for work through path switching. It is completely obvious, because one needs to live in Sweden to validate a nursing education plus one must pass a language test first, and these persons can very rarely do that.
The number of nurses who came to Sweden as labor migrants in 2022 – that was under the old regime, which Annika Hirvonen stood behind – was 18. None of them have been forced to leave Sweden. They all meet the new salary requirements. Regarding the average salary for labor migrants who are nurses, I have the figures on my computer. They manage this without any problems. The same applies to doctors. We do not mass-deport qualified healthcare personnel.
Then we can move on to the people who are nursing assistants and assistant nurses. There, it is true that some do not manage the new wage requirement – that is correct. Does Annika Hirvonen know how many assistant nurses we brought in with work migration permits last year under the old regime, 2022? Does she have any idea? No, I don't think so. It is, therefore, some hundred. It is extremely few people. I think it was about 80. This is a profession where there are 200,000 employees in Sweden, so I think we will manage.
Then it concerns the individuals who say there are reasons not to go back. Yes, there are reasons that they do not want to go back. It is because it is not fun to live in Afghanistan – no one thinks it is. But not wanting to live in a place is not sufficient for one to be able to receive a residence permit in Sweden.
If we apply the principle that Annika Hirvonen is now proposing, that is, that a person who does not want to live in their home country should be allowed to settle here, it is the end for this country. She herself will not find the consequences particularly pleasant. Thank God that we will not introduce that order!
Ola Möller (S)
Mr. Speaker! Work is the foundation of our prosperity. Through work, growth is created that can be distributed. Work is what supports a welfare society, what ensures that our children can receive a good education, and what ensures that our sick and elderly can receive the care and treatment they deserve.
Sweden shall, to the greatest extent possible, strive to achieve full employment by educating and activating its own population. Full employment is the strongest instrument we have to hold our country together. When we toil and work together to create prosperity, bonds of solidarity and belonging are also forged, which in itself is the basis for the redistribution via the welfare state to be perceived as legitimate and justified. Those who perform their duty shall also be able to claim their rights.
But unfortunately, we do not always manage as a country to fill the needs that our labor market has and requires. When it comes to certain occupations, there is simply a greater demand for labor than the country itself can manage. If an engineer or a nursing assistant is needed now, it is difficult to wait if they are not available in our own population. It takes time to educate.
Furthermore, it should be pointed out that the circle of possible recruitments is even wider. Since EU membership, we have an enormous number of people at our disposal – a labor force reserve of several million – to fill the needs that exist in Sweden.
Despite the fact that we have around half a million people who are unemployed in Sweden – they have increased by 100,000 since Ulf Kristersson and Jimmie Åkesson came to power – there may be occasions when recruitment, for some reason, must be carried out outside of Sweden and outside of the EU. That is when there is a need for recruitment from the whole world, that is to say, labor immigration.
Mr. Speaker! For us Social Democrats, it is obvious that it is Sweden's needs that must be put first. If Sweden has a greater need to recruit personnel from third countries than to put an unemployed person into employment, it shall be permitted. We shall, of course, always have Swedish conditions and what the labor market parties have established – that is always the starting point. Therefore, labor immigration must never have the starting point of a unilateral employer interest.
This assessment has historically been carried out through a government agency-based labor market assessment, where the parties have been involved in a consultation. But it was dismantled in 2008 by the Moderaterna and the other Alliance parties – not, as was previously stated here, by the Socialdemokraterna. It was a purely bourgeois idea, which was backed up by Miljöpartiet.
That reorganization changed the composition of labor immigration in Sweden with a stroke of a pen. One moved from a means-tested labor immigration and a highly qualified workforce to a low-skilled one with low-wage competition. That resulted in an extreme exploitation of people from poor countries who came here, and one never gave unemployed people in Sweden a shadow of a chance to enter the labor market. Wages and conditions were dumped, and people were exploited.
Furthermore, this made the trade union organization more difficult. It should be remembered that one of the clearest objectives of liberal labor immigration has been to break down the unions' opportunities to organize in the workplace.
We mean that we urgently need to re-establish the means-tested labor immigration, because it is Sweden's needs as a country that should form the basis for the policy in this area. Then we could safeguard full employment, safeguard the Swedish model of labor relations, and have a high legitimacy in the welfare state, which simply is a fundamental basis for us Social Democrats. In the same way, we can never allow exploitation and utilization of people.
Unfortunately, there is no parliamentary support for this, and therefore we can only regret the situation that has arisen. But to handle the unreasonable effects of the government's raised wage floor, and because we oppose that it should be the government and not the authorities that determine the needs in the labor market, we want to make the wage requirement discretionary.
This is interesting from the perspective that it was stated earlier in the debate that it would be impossible to adapt the wage levels to different regions in the country. For those of you who do not know what "dispositivitet" means, and I respect that one is not well-versed in trade union issues or labor market issues, it means that the local parties signing collective agreements can decide whether a piece of legislation is applicable. Either one proceeds with the wage floor, or one lets the parties decide the level in accordance with the collective agreements, which would handle the different wage levels around the country.
It would also mean that we get a control at the workplace. It means that we have union representatives at the workplaces where the wage requirement can be deviated from, which would also mean that workplaces with collective agreements get a competitive advantage vis-à-vis those that do not comply with the Swedish model, that is, employers without collective agreements.
We trust our union comrades and are completely convinced that the members of Kommunals, the members of IF Metall, the members of Handels and their elected representatives can perform this assessment. They know best what applies locally, and that is how it is handled.
Mr. Speaker! I apologize for exceeding my speaking time, but the heart is full and so on.
There should reasonably be support for this line here in the chamber, since everyone says they stand behind the Swedish model. In that case, it is only a matter of trusting the parties and making the wage demand discretionary.
I also want to emphasize the important fact that functional labor migration is based on the fact that workers' rights and conditions are maintained and protected. It also depends on companies being able to find the right skills and on the state having control over migration. This means that employers who do not behave properly should be able to receive tangible sanctions, something we Social Democrats have thought for a long time, and we welcome that the government, in the bill mentioned, will do some of that moving forward into the spring.
Unfortunately, it comes very late, and significantly more needs to be done. Companies that are allowed to use labor migration must be controlled significantly more rigorously. As late as today, we could read about the report from the National Audit Office which points out that cheating occurs and that labor is exploited to the extreme within the current system, this being due to a lack of authority management regarding controls of companies.
We must also manage the intra-EU workforce by, for example, checking A1 certificates much better. That work must be reinforced. That is what we want to do and have allocated resources to.
Mr. Speaker! In conclusion, I want to emphasize that a means-tested labor migration is what we Social Democrats consider to be the absolute best order for labor migration. It would create order and clarity on the labor market and fulfill the goals that labor migration should aim for: skills supply to meet Sweden's needs. Labor migration is an important complement on the Swedish labor market but should never be an obstacle for Sweden to reach full employment and a solidary and common welfare.
I support all our reservations but move for approval of reservation 2 only.
Annika Hirvonen (MP)
Mr. Speaker! I think it is positive that Ola Möller represents a more reasonable line than a fixed wage demand for everyone. The discretionary model is still a step in the right direction.
What I do not understand is why the Social Democrats think it is good that we also deport those people who are already here and work in the welfare sector, run businesses, and are resources as employees all around our country. The Social Democrats did not just vote to remove the possibility for future asylum seekers to apply for a work permit from Sweden if they get a job here while awaiting their asylum decision, but they also voted for 4,700 working people to be deported from here.
I do not understand why the Social Democrats think it is a good policy, especially when we see how difficult it is for many entrepreneurs but also for the welfare system, not least in northern Sweden, to find staff, for example for elderly care.
Ola Möller (S)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you for the question, Annika Hirvonen!
I believe that one needs to look at what "spårbytet" actually was. It was the strongest's opportunity to get a second chance from within Sweden, a way to exploit the asylum system to jump the queue and get advantages that other labor migrants did not get. That is what "spårbytet" was.
It does not mean that everyone who has made a track change is a cheater or has made a mistake. Many of them make fantastic contributions. But approximately 70 percent of those who were track changers did not reach the salary requirement that applied at the time we abolished the track change.
I also question the figure 4,700; it is lower. One must also remember that many of those who have made a route change came from Georgia, Armenia, and Uzbekistan – countries from which there is no reasonable reason to travel here and seek asylum. This is also reflected in that many of them instead made a route change. I think it is important to carry this with us as a basis for why we Social Democrats have been against route changes all the time.
However, there are certainly individuals in the group of switchers who meet the criteria set for being allowed to work in Sweden, and in that case, it is unreasonable that they cannot be allowed to stay. That problem we Social Democrats have identified, and in our congress decisions, we have said that we are prepared to look at widening the possibility of applying for a work permit from within the country somewhat, which might affect some of these people.
Since we would also like to have a means test of the workforce or, secondly, a discretionary power, more people could certainly remain here and work with our model. I do, however, think it is important to take the starting point that the track switching was abolished because it was a system that mixed up labor migration and asylum migration in a way that was not favorable in either case.
Annika Hirvonen (MP)
Mr. Speaker! We are probably all in agreement that there are people who have abused the residence permit system. The difference is what conclusion one draws from it. We in Miljöpartiet have drawn the conclusion that one must then close the opportunities to abuse the system. To draw the conclusion that we should send out everyone who is already here is completely unreasonable. Some are, for example, forced back to Iran to re-apply for their work from a situation where people are murdered in the streets. Families are forced to sell houses and homes to leave Sweden and cannot be sure that they can come back. People run businesses that one cannot keep if one must first travel out of Sweden.
It becomes impossible even if one belongs to the group that genuinely feared for their life and their safety and came to Sweden precisely because of that fear but, for various reasons, failed to prove the risk of persecution at Migrationsverket. It is unreasonable that one should then be forced back, for example, to Afghanistan or Iran to apply for their work permit from there.
It will have very serious consequences for these families, but it will also have consequences for the companies that lose their staff. It will have consequences for the elderly in elderly care when there are fewer employees who can take care of them. It will have consequences for the colleagues who have to run even a little faster to keep up with the work.
Even though we have high unemployment, and we can truly blame the government for being passive regarding that, it is still the case that there are very many who cannot find the people they need to hire, especially in the northern part of Sweden.
Ola Möller (S)
Mr. Speaker! Instead of a very high return migration grant, one might perhaps have an enhanced opportunity to move within the country. In terms of recruitment, one could therefore use the money more effectively.
I think Annika Hirvonen puts her finger on what distinguishes the Social Democrats' and the Green Party's migration policy. Annika Hirvonen says that there are some who cheat and some who do the right thing, and then everyone should be allowed to stay. We say that there are some who cheat and some who do the right thing, and then we must ensure that there is good order from the beginning: One applies for their work permit outside Sweden and receives a work permit if they meet the criteria we have set up. The rest should not be here. This is what a strict, regulated migration policy is. There is a difference between us and the Green Party, and it is good that it comes out.
There are obviously plenty of cases where people have been able to apply for permits outside of Sweden. Down in Malmö, we have a case that Sydsvenskan has taken up. There, the person in question traveled to Iran, submitted an application, and returned, because he or she has met the rules that apply for work permits in Sweden. Good so.
In the cases that Annika Hirvonen describes, there is a possibility to apply for a new work permit from Sweden if there are exceptional reasons. Such reasons can be found in certain cases.
If one is subjected to death threats, as Annika Hirvonen says people experience, one has the right to seek asylum. After the reasons have been examined and an assessment has been made that someone has grounds for protection, one may stay on such a basis.
The depiction that people cannot return and that we are throwing them out to a murderous regime is not correct. I believe the problem lies in that stories are being told that are not compatible with reality, in the same way as high figures have been used to describe the numbers in this. Then it does not sound credible if one argues that everyone who cheats should also be allowed to stay. Here, the Socialdemokraterna and Miljöpartiet differ.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.