Immigration Alerts

This post was originally published in January, 2016 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

As with all corporate immigration, immigration compliance is essential when relocating employees to Sweden, a process that can be very time consuming. Shaving days off each step of your employee’s VISA application can be a great gain for a project or for the future of a company.

This post was originally published in July, 2016 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

After spending a lot of resources on talent acquisition, the last thing you want is for it to trip on the last stumbling block with getting a Swedish work visa rejected. Government compliance is a key component for successful talent management and relocating employees. The talent pool in Sweden is often too small when you need to close a skill gap, reaching out for international employees is the only way to go and that is why it is crucial to know how the process of applying for a work visa works and how to prevent the reasons why a Swedish work visa is rejected. 

It is the responsibility of local HR to ensure that Immigration Documents and compliance reporting for employees relocating to Sweden are correct and current.
It’s easy to make a mistake - and the European Union gives false comfort with immigration procedures.
Some companies prefer to ask the employee to take charge of their own legal standing , but this is not a sound idea.
Why can’t the employees just look in their passports and review their residence cards and work permits to ensure that they are in the country legally? Because it’s your responsibility as a company to be compliant. The individual will certainly pay a hefty price being evicted, however employing illegal workers is a serious offence; not reporting them and maintaining current records is not just negligence it’s a crime! In most companies that responsibility sits with the local HR: It’s not feasible to blame the global mobility centre in the US/UK/Switzerland - It will reflect on the local business.
Hence, it’s a good idea to do a stress test on your organization and ensure that each employee has the correct legal standing, and that all required reports have been completed.

We decided a few weeks ago to enter a race together raising fund for the Children’s cancer fund. It’s interesting to see how different strategies we have had to prepare ourselves. Some started from scratch and built up slowly by running around her building every other day others started taking long walks, morning runs, or taking longer distances from the onset. No matter what the strategy behind it was the important thing is that we have the same focus and the same goal which is survival and giving.

Rain meets me in London, just like it should. It is shortly after the EU election and there are strong winds of EU discontent with the administration, nationalistic groups are gaining ground in many places.

This post was originally published in February, 2016 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

While your work permit application is being processed by the Migration Agency, there are vast differences in what you are allowed to do and where you are allowed to go, depending on two main factors: the type of application and your citizenship. 

Have you resided in Sweden in a certain amount of time and now wonder whether to become a Swedish citizen or not? If you are anticipating to become a Swedish citizen, there are some aspects to this that need to be taken under consideration.

In our line of business, we see a lot of transferees (i.e., the person who is moving to Sweden for work) who have been granted work permits for a longer period of time than their employment in Sweden lasted. Considering the hidden consequences of work permits being granted for longer than the employment lasts, we thought we’d address it here.

The never-ending negative PR surrounding the Swedish migration agency’s slow processing of work permits has gained some traction in the press again.

The interpretations of the mandatory registrations for foreign workers in Sweden that was implemented last year varies. While some companies are very diligent - I guess they have to after having experienced bribery scandals in other countries with government contract losses as a result or even having to withdraw out of potentially lucrative markets due to a lack of compliance or immigration crimes - there are some upstanding companies that just don't see the point of it all. They can't get the administration to work internally and have interpreted the legal aspect in a practical common sense manner. Not sure that is recommended, last summer we brought in extra staff to help our clients stay compliant. Don't lose your client contracts on the small stuff. Focus on the core competencies and let experts handle the risk avoidance by taking the ball and run with it.