‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come’: How Sweden’s teen…

They study or plan to study at some of Sweden’s top universities, while their parents hold senior positions at companies like Tetra Pak, Ericsson, and Volvo Cars. The Local has heard from more than 50 people affected by the teen deportation issue.

Three years after The Local first started covering the teen deportation issue caused by Sweden's 2021 Migration Act, Sweden's media has woken up to how it is splitting 18- and 19-year-olds from their families, with many deported to countries they haven't visited for half their lives.  While this coverage is welcome, the cases the Swedish media have highlighted, such as 18-year-old Jomana Gad, 19-year-old Iliya, and 18-year-old Ayla, have been mainly young people whose parents came to Sweden as refugees.  As a result, politicians and the public seem largely unaware of the extent to which the issue is deterring the highly-skilled workers Sweden's government claims to want to attract.

It is not only the families of children who are ordered to leave Sweden who are affected, but also those whose parents are forced to delay applying for permanent residency to avoid being caught in the trap.  When he had made his decision to take a leadership role in R&D at one of Sweden's biggest pharmaceutical firms, an executive from Iran told us, Sweden had yet to pass the 2021 Migration Act.  "When I made the move, it was at the time when they changed everything: if I had known that this was coming, I wouldn't have come to Sweden," he said.

"I had offers in Germany. I had offers in Switzerland, and I could have gone to Australia as well."  Unlike less fortunate highly-skilled workers, he was aware of the risk, and kept his son's right to residency as a dependant by extending his work permit, for which the maximum age for a dependent is 21, and not applying for permanent residency, for which the maximum age is only 18.  "I'm not as vulnerable as many other families because I knew this was coming," he said.

"I'm not talking on behalf of myself. I'm talking on behalf of families like mine who are being shattered because of this very irrational regulation."  He has paid a price nonetheless by foregoing the security of permanent residency. "If anything happens to me, if I lose my job, then I need to leave everything behind, and that's a very distressing situation."  Sweden could still end up losing an extremely valuable worker, however.

Rather than study in Sweden, his son has now applied for a course in Australia, knowing that once he turns 21 he will no longer be eligible for a permit as a dependent under work permit rules.  "He's already applied for a couple of courses here at Swedish universities as well. But if things keep going in this direction, I would like him to just leave as early as possible, to be honest," the executive said.  He calculates that in six years he paid the same amount of tax someone earning the Swedish median wage would pay in over 20.

If he opts to follow his son to Australia, or the family moves elsewhere, he believes his company would struggle to replace him in Sweden.  "I could maybe be replaced in the US, but not so easily here, because then you're talking about finding somebody who wants to relocate from one of the big R&D hubs like London, Basel, Zurich, Frankfurt, or the US West Coast, and I'm not sure how many people would be interested."  Ximena Ramos Salas, a global obesity expert from Canada, moved to Sweden in 2018 to be with her terminally ill mother, who lived in Skåne.

Although she herself grew up in Sweden, she lost her permanent residency when she was living in Canada, so when she moved back she relocated her consulting business and applied for a work permit. She is now an affiliated researcher at Lund University and works as a consultant around the world. When they arrived, her son was only 12, which should have given him more than enough time to qualify for permanent residency before turning 18.  But when she first applied for permanent residency, the Migration Agency had questions about her company's clients, so rather than granting it, instead extended her work permit.

When she applied for the second time, in 2022, the Migration Agency took a full two and a half years to decide on the case.This meant that by the time they finally did so, in April last year, her son had turned 18 and was told he would have to leave Sweden.  Before the decision, a Migration Agency official called her to inform her about what was coming.  "I was freaking out, and I was like, 'what do you mean?

It's your fault you took two and a half years to get back to us'. And he said, 'No, this is the rule. It's black and white, and unless you have special circumstances, he has to leave.'"  "We feel like this was done on purpose," she complains. "They wanted him to turn 18 so they could reject him."  They appealed on the grounds of their son's severe ADHD, which they believes means he is incapable of living in Canada alone, hoping that he would be covered by the "exceptionally distressing circumstances", the government enacted in 2023.

Their son became so stressed and anxious after the decision that he could not stay in school and had to drop out of his Komvux classes. In January, they received another rejection, which they now intend to appeal. If this appeal is also refused, the family has already decided to return to Canada. "We're going to go back. My mom died in November and there's no way we're gonna send him back alone," she said.

"He is fully dependent on us." The Local spoke to an Indian engineer at the Swedish engineering giant Ericsson, who has had to delay her application for permanent residency, after Ericsson's mobility team warned her that if she applied, her son risked being deported. Her husband, an IT professional who works for Fujitsu in Stockholm, has also opted not to seek permanent residency.  "I asked Ericsson, 'why I was not told about this before I made the decision to come here?' and they said that the rules change so frequently that they just don't know what they're going to be." She shared the details of five Ericsson colleagues, all whom told The Local they had delayed applying for permanent residency or soon would do so to prevent their children being deported, and all of whom said they were considering returning to India as a result.   "We have bought a home here and it would have given us a sense of security if we had permanent residency because then we would know that we had a path towards citizenship," she said.   "There's also a lot of uncertainty work-wise," she added.

"If you have PR, if there are layoffs, you are secured. But if you're on a work permit, you just have to pack your bags and go".  Her son, who came to Sweden when he was 14, is currently in his final year at upper secondary school, and wants to study economics or artificial intelligence at a Swedish university. If this turns out to be impossible, she said she and her husband were considering returning to India.   "Our son was my biggest motivation.

We has heard so much about the education system in Sweden and we wanted him to give that exposure. But if that purpose is defeated, we are thinking, 'okay, we should go back'."  Prince Obioha came to Sweden from Nigeria when he was 16 to join his father, a Swedish citizen who works as a manager for McDonalds. He is now in his second year studying economics at Lund University.  When his father applied to renew his residency as a dependent he was 17, but he turned 18 while waiting for a decision.  "As soon as I became 18, they wrote to me and said that the application my father had made was no longer valid as I was no longer a dependant," he remembers.

"How am I not dependent on my parents? I am a full-time student at university, and I live with my dad." Obioha fears he will be deported to Nigeria before he is able to graduate next year and said the stress was affecting his studies. "I cannot concentrate. I am afraid that I'll be deported and I have nowhere to go. Going back to my country is not even an option."  The Local spoke to a Brazilian engineer couple who moved to Sweden from New Zealand five years ago with their two daughters, because the mother's employer, Tetra Pak, offered her a position at its Lund headquarters.  "We wanted to come to Sweden as a family-friendly country with good education and good job opportunities for skilled workers," she remembers.

"And then suddenly they changed the rules of the game, and we got caught, like many, many families, in the middle." At the time they moved, their oldest daughter was 15, and their youngest, who is now a Swedish citizen, was only seven. The couple became eligible to receive permanent residency when the oldest was about to turn 18, but they held off and instead renewed their work permits to avoid the teen deportation trap.  The oldest is now studying engineering at Lund University, but as she is 21, she now no longer has a right to residency as a dependant even under work permit rules and, like Obioha, risks being deported before she can finish her degree.  "She's been educated by the Swedish government for the last seven years, and now they want to kick her out because, of course, it's better to take the knowledge that she's acquired here and give it to another economy," said the father dryly.

"That's a very smart strategy."  In June last year, the family applied for permanent residency, and while the parents and youngest daughter were granted it, the oldest daughter received a letter in July saying that the agency did not yet see that she had sufficient grounds. When the family contacted the agency, they struggled to get any information on what additional documentation would help.  "We still haven't heard back.

So it isn't necessarily that we have been declined, but it was sort of a warning that right now you don't have what you need," the daughter said.  They've submitted what documents they can, and now can do little more than wait for what looks likely to be a rejection. The eldest daughter is unsure about moving to New Zealand, where she has citizenship, because she has no contacts there. In Brazil, where she could live with her grandmother, she feels the opportunities for education and work are lacking.  Her mother argues that Sweden, in trying to solve social problems caused by immigration in the past, has failed to distinguish between highly skilled workers and immigrants with a low level of education.  "They are changing the rules retroactively to solve a problem that has nothing to do with our group of highly skilled immigrants," she said.

"They are putting us all in the same bucket."  The father thinks that deporting university students like her daughter is an act of self-harm.  "She's already integrated. She speaks the language, and she's getting ready to be part of the professional market. Now they just take away everything they gave her and say, 'now you go' – because of politics, that's it. There's zero strategy behind it."

Summary

This report covers the latest developments in artificial intelligence. The information presented highlights key changes and updates that are relevant to those following this topic.

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