Labour immigration in Parliament: it should be easy to do the right thing

Digitization Skills supply

Hard-working, well-integrated labor immigrants, working for serious employers, are now being deported on a regular basis. This is a disaster, not only for the individuals concerned, but also for Sweden as a talent-attracting nation. The (S) and (MP) members of the Riksdag Social Security Committee, who were visited on Tuesday by Almega, IT&Telecom companies and the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, seem to fully agree that the current state of affairs is unreasonable. The question is how to stop the misery.

On 16 November, the Riksdag decided, on the basis of a report from a unanimous Social Insurance Committee, that the current inquiry into labor immigration should be given a broader remit. The background was that the current application of the legislation means that labor immigrants are denied work permits or extensions of permits due to minor mistakes by serious employers.

Today, Tuesday, December 13, as part of a delegation from Almega, IT&Telecom companies and the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, I visited the aforementioned committee and met with a number of S and MP members to discuss this issue that is very important to all of us.

Our key messages to Members of Parliament were:

  • The leading representatives of migration policy must clearly declare that talent attraction is important for Swedish business, and that a positive approach must permeate both regulation and enforcement.
  • The Swedish Migration Agency must become much more service-oriented, so that the many employers who want to do the right thing are also helped to do the right thing.

We brought with us the proposal for one-stop shopping to facilitate skills immigration, which Almega presented last week, as well as the five questions on migration policy that IT&Telekomföretagen and a number of other organizations presented in DN Debatt on 9 November.

The members seemed to agree that we are right in substance - "it should be easy to do the right thing" - but said that it is difficult to control the Migration Agency's current application, and that they find it problematic to balance between facilitating favorable labor immigration and controlling that no abuse occurs. Here, the members called for clearer ambitions from the business community to really go after the employers in the parts of the service sector where irregularities occur.

Our view that labor migration equals talent attraction seemed to be something of an aha moment for some of the members. With a background in the trade union movement, the dominant image is rather that of labor immigration equals cheap labor and wage dumping, which is not at all the case when we talk about serious employers in the knowledge-intensive sector.

This Thursday, December 15, the committee reviewing labor immigration will present its proposals. What we all hope for, of course, is that these can contribute to a somewhat more reasonable application of the legislation. The question is whether it can also help those who have already received deportation orders? Changes in the long term are not enough - we very much need action here and now.