SULF welcomes inquiry report proposals

On 4 December 2024, the inquiry "Better migration rules for researchers and students" (Ds 2024:31) submitted its proposals to the government. For years, SULF has been warning both the current government and the previous one that the changes to migration legislation introduced in the summer of 2021 were making Sweden far less attractive to doctoral candidates and researchers from countries outside the EU/EEA. This is mainly due to a poorly designed self-support requirement and a number of problems related to changing residence permits. SULF has also proposed a number of solutions which we have presented to the governments and to individual political parties. We believe that this inquiry’s proposals will solve most of the problems we have highlighted, but we will examine them in more detail to see if we feel the need to propose any changes during the consultation period.

In general, SULF believes that the committee’s proposals will lead to an improved situation and that they are certainly a step in the right direction. It is now important that the government acts on the proposals immediately so that changes to the legislation can be implemented as soon as possible. The committee proposes that the recommended changes come into force on 1 March 2026, almost five years after the unfortunate changes that created the current problems were put in place. Too much time has passed since then and it took too long for this review to be launched, but now, all focus must be on correcting the mistakes and restoring Sweden's international reputation.

The main proposals presented in the report are as follows:

• The qualifying period for a doctoral candidate or researcher to be eligible for a permanent residence permit should be reduced from four years to three years, (the latter on condition that the applicant has had a continuous right of residence). At the same time, doctoral candidate and researchers should continue to be allowed to apply if they have had residence permits for a total of four years during a seven-year period.

• Applicants being allowed to combine different types of residence permit when applying for a permanent residence permit, which to a large extent already happens in practice, should be added to the text of the legislation.

• Applicants should be permitted to include doctoral candidate scholarships when the self-support requirement for permanent residence is assessed.

• The self-support requirement should be defined more clearly in the Aliens Ordinance, and the committee recommends that previous income should also be taken into account, that a forecast of future income should be made and that a doctoral candidate who has had sufficient income previously should be considered likely to fulfil the self-support requirement.

• It should be possible to cancel a fixed-term residence permit and replace it with a permanent residence permit. This would allow an application for a permanent residence permit to be submitted and granted during a period when the applicant has a fixed-term residence permit.

• A doctoral candidate should be able to be granted a residence permit for research instead of for studies, while the option to grant a residence permit for doctoral studies should remain.

• Some improvements are proposed regarding the possibility to change residence permits without having to leave Sweden in order to do so.

• Applicants should be allowed to leave Sweden while a residence permit application is being assessed in certain cases.

• A residence permit to seek employment after completing a doctorate or research should be valid for 18 months instead of the current 12 months.

• It should be made possible for people covered by the Temporary Protection Directive to change to another residency status, for example, residency for research.