‘I didn’t do anything wrong’: Sweden’s immigration regime is tightening, improving lives | Immigration Issues

Earlier this month, Raquel Viveira’s friend gave her an envelope he had just taken from their box in Malmo.

The 31-year-old Brazilian was happy when he saw a letter from the Swedish immigration agency. He had been waiting for months to get a residence permit.

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But his friend’s face turned pale when he gave it to him.

“They said, ‘You have to leave,'” said Viveira, who was given days to leave the country.

The next day was June 6, Sweden’s National Day. Viveira had planned to paint her nails in the colors of the Swedish flag, blue and yellow. After completing the Swedish language course for Immigrants, she was able to speak the language. He had started a sole proprietorship and was paying taxes.

He called the agency, demanding an explanation of the plan. His removal is said to have happened because he switched between two cohabitation visas, as the previous relationship ended. Under Sweden’s immigration reform, that ability was sufficient. He took the plane ticket and left.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” he told Al Jazeera by phone from Sao Paulo, where he is awaiting answers to his new job.

Viveira runs an Instagram account about running the Swedish government. A video about his experience has garnered nearly 300,000 views. The secret message does not stop, he said, with white workers, Swedish speakers and the spouses of all citizens who join together to lose their position.

If family reunification laws become more stringent, they may be removed even if they return.

If the right-wing forces gain more ground in September’s election, Viveira said he will reconsider “if we want to stay”.

‘We are waking up to a new Sweden this summer’

In 2015, about 10,000 people a week arrived in Sweden, most of them fleeing conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Back then, it was home to one of the largest import operations in Europe. In the ten years since then, the number of people applying for asylum each year has dropped from 163,000 to about 9,000.

This summer, three policy changes meet.

On June 12, as a The new EU Migration and Asylum Pact came into force, Sweden chose the most intensive measures that all member states have.

On July 12, a new law will come into force, banning all asylum seekers from temporary permits, and removing the permanent system that previously defined Sweden’s integration.

And on July 13, the so-called “information law” will require six government agencies, including tax authorities and social welfare organizations, to report suspects to the police, and to violate privacy laws.

Together, legal experts say, the new laws not only strengthen Sweden’s immigration policies. They also explain what it means to live in Sweden without a Swedish passport.

“We are waking up to a new Sweden this summer,” Sofia Ronnow Pessah, a defense rights lawyer and policy advisor at RFSL Ungdom, told Al Jazeera. “Some people feel that they need to be on the alert all the time, trying to understand how their lives will be affected, even in ways they don’t really think about.” And this, when examining a few laws, is unfortunate.”

The process of seeking asylum is ‘Mission Impossible’ for us

The information law has raised alarm among undocumented people like Leili Mehtarabbasi, a 70-year-old Iranian who has lived in Sweden without a permit for nearly 26 years, and her family.

His son, Ali Reza Roudaki, 49, who is a manager at a ship battery company, tells the story of the family with the exhaustion of a man who has been walking the labyrinth for years.

Mehtarabbasi came to Sweden on a tourist visa in 2000 to support his sister after their father died. At the same time, Roudaki, a political student, was arrested in Iran. Soon he and his younger brother passed through Turkey, and arrived in Sweden after eight months of travel.

These children received residency through a 2009 law allowing undocumented immigrants to re-apply for jobs. Mehtarabbasi was not part of that cycle. He became hidden. She survived undocumented breast cancer, is receiving treatment through the Red Cross, and has participated in protests in support of the civil rights movement in Iran.

Every new job was rejected. He is currently in immigration court.

“With all the new rules,” Roudaki said, “it’s like Mission Impossible for us.”

Leaving is not an option. Last year, his wife died of cancer, and now Mehtarabbasi takes care of his four-year-old granddaughter.

“I don’t know what else we can do,” he said. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Stricter asylum rules as far-flung rights rise

Under the move to temporary permits, residents must continually demonstrate that they have the ability to renew. Losing a job, going on parental leave or defaulting on a loan can lead to layoffs. The new “behaviour” law allows the removal of a resident for behavior that is not objectionable, and, Pessah warned, “explained clearly”.

The family reunification law would require about 53,000 kronor ($5,500) a month for a person with two children who wants to bring their spouse to Sweden. Reorganization means that employers may not leave the country, while employers may not want to hire people who are unknown.

Sweden’s reforms are taking place in the midst of political change.

Strict immigration rules have been in place since 2022, when the election established a dependent government Democrats in Swedena party with right-wing roots.

On June 17, in the European Parliament, when the vote to speed up deportations was passed, members of the right called “Return”.

Swedish MEP Abir Al-Sahlani of the Center Party rose: “I have never felt safe in this room, until now.”

Sweden’s Social Democrats refused, the only representative on the left in Europe to do so, as 84 percent of their Social Democratic colleagues across the country voted against it.

The Social Democrats, the largest opposition party, have also promised a stricter immigration policy, but have said they will not join the Sweden Democrats and will reject controversial proposals, such as the return of permanent residence permits. They can amend, not repeal, the law of notice and the law of removal.

But the EU’s new immigration deal is European law, and repealing it would require European cooperation.

“The results are seen later,” Pessah said. “The complaints we are seeing now because of the deportation of young people who have spent their whole lives in Sweden, those are the laws of three years ago.