New work permit system needs to steer harder towards shorter processing times
The Swedish Migration Agency today presented a new model for handling work permit cases in order to promote highly skilled labor immigration. The industry and employer organizations TechSverige, Innovationsföretagen and Teknikföretagen are positive to the government's ambitions but point out that the model presented today needs to be sharpened to hit the right target and provide several inputs to the design of the new system.
The decision states, among other things, that the ambition level for the time within which a response must be given to a work permit application for all groups is lowered. From 10 days to 120 days for the groups that are not considered highly qualified and from 10 to 30 days for the occupational groups defined as highly qualified.
The definition of highly skilled unfortunately excludes many key skills that are needed and will slow down the pace of ongoing start-ups and make new investments less attractive.
- The government's message today is that most of the thousands of new employees to be recruited to our battery factories and other businesses are not prioritized. This is misguided. Managers and scientists do not build or run any factories on their own. The choice to exclude crucial professional roles from the new fast track, such as qualified operators in the battery field and automation technicians, means that the new establishments are delayed and lose position against competitors, says Klas Wåhlberg, CEO of Teknikföretagen.
- The Migration Agency has gone from promising a response within 10 days to a response within 30 days for complete work permit applications. "This is far too low a level of ambition for the engineers, programmers and technicians who, year after year, have an approval rate of almost 100 percent and who should be able to get answers to their applications by return mail," says Elin Lydahl, Director of Innovation Business Sweden.
Teknikföretagen, TechSverige and Innovationsföretagen together represent 6 400 companies with almost half a million employees in the knowledge-intensive industry and service sector. These companies recruit thousands of engineers, technicians and programmers from outside the EU every year.
- Global competition for talent and digital excellence is fierce. There is a huge shortage and demand for skills in areas such as machine learning, AI, software development and security. We cannot afford bureaucracy and delays. It leads to companies losing talent and losing momentum, to Sweden losing tax revenue and to further investment in Sweden not materializing," says Åsa Zetterberg, Director of TechSverige.
- We believe that the current certification system is of great importance to our member companies, and we are very keen that a new system is designed in close dialog with the business community. The implementation must not be rushed, the new service functions that are being built up must be test-driven. It is clear that the ambitions to achieve internationally competitive processing times should be stepped up. The new system must not create border problems that hinder Swedish companies' opportunities to invest, expand and continue to compete on the world market from a strong base in Sweden," says Klas Wåhlberg, CEO of Teknikföretagen.
In the continued work on the design of the new system for labour immigration, whose mission is clearly to promote the skills needs of the business community, the organizations would like to put forward the following:
1. Introduce a maximum processing time of thirty days within the fast track, but aim for significantly faster processing. A processing time of 30 days should be formulated as a maximum ceiling for the processing time and not be the Migration Agency's ambition level. As a target and as an ambition, 30 days is far too low to be internationally competitive for this category of highly skilled labor immigrants with a very high approval rate. Finland, for example, processes this type of application in two weeks.
2. Include more occupational groups in the fast track. The narrow interpretation of which applications can be processed faster than four months will create problems for the large start-ups that are now being planned or already implemented in Sweden. Managers and researchers do not build factories and companies on their own. The fast-track system should therefore be extended to qualified skilled workers. For example, operators with battery or CNC skills that are important for a new start-up to be successful and existing companies to grow. For Sweden to be attractive for further investment, it is critical that companies can quickly get service and processing for the entire workforce. The fact that the Migration Agency states that it has not been tasked by the Government with promoting new establishments is therefore problematic, and the Government should clarify the Agency's task in this respect.
3. Authorities such as the Migration Agency are not experts on which occupations are highly skilled, what education or professional experience is required for a particular occupation. It is important that the business community is involved in assessing which occupations should be included in the fast track. This applies not least when it comes to new professions, or in the case of equivalent assessments.
4. Process the pile of existing work permit applications and ensure that the Migration Agency's digital platform is functional and allows complete applications. There are over 50,000 open applications at the Migration Agency today. These should be dealt with as far as possible before a new system is launched.
5. Shorten the processing time for other work permit applications as well. In addition to broadening the scope of the fast track, the ambition for other categories of work permit applications should also be higher than keeping the application process within the statutory four months. We believe that there is room for higher ambitions in light of the new resources allocated to the Swedish Migration Agency for 2023, the reduced inflow of new applications in 2023 and the additional restrictions on the possibility of work permits that will result from the new dependency requirement from October 1 this year.
6. From a business and holistic perspective, it is relevant to also include in the processing process the new requirement for prospective employees from visa-free countries, since November 1, 2022, to physically present a passport. This is a direct consequence of the Migration Agency's decision and means that an additional 30 days of processing time and additional unpredictability will be added to the work permit process. Physical presentation of passports can mean traveling hundreds of miles for the entire family concerned, is part of the work permit process and must therefore be included when the Migration Agency measures the processing time for work permits. There must be incentives to push down all relevant parts of the process that the Migration Agency has control over.