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Comment by bjourne | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a Nazi, but rules are rules. If you are intent on immigrating to a country, then it is your duty to read and understand that country's laws. I can't visit Singapore and then claim ignorance if I get fined for spitting.

E.g the guy could have googled "sweden work permit," clicked on the first result, then through to the FAQ:

What is the requirement regarding wages?

To be granted a work permit, you must be offered a wage that is at the level of a Swedish collective agreement or what is normal for the profession or industry. You must also work to such an extent that your wages amount to at least SEK 13,000 a month before tax.

https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/...

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It's easier to get it wrong than you might think. Sweden doesn't publish a specific "rules for work visas" document. That website is it, and it is not all inclusive. The only way to know all the rules of the visa are to read the actual laws (in Swedish, and in Swedish "legalese", so good luck to foreigners... the people who would need to know), and to read all of the relevant case law around it. On your first days in a country, you probably aren't perusing the rulings of their high courts.

In this guy's case, there is very relevant case law. Before March 2015 Migrationsverket applied the rules based on the average of your work visa period, 2 years. They would take your last 2 year's salary, divide by 24, and see if it's over 13,000 kr per month. After March 2015, following new case law, they started looking at each month individually and deporting if any specific month violated the rules.

Depending on when he did this, it is possible that if he asked a migration attorney for guidance they would have approved, and they would have been correct. The rules retroactively changed that year. It still would be just as likely to make the wrong decision after the court ruling, since migration court rulings aren't a particularly big topic of conversation for most people. Nobody really learned about it until deportations started skyrocketing in 2016.

I wrote a bit about the topic here: http://dontdeportthedog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Failu...

There is also a pretty visible "Contact us" link with phone numbers and email addresses: https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Contact-us.html So I can not feel sorry for him because he should have known. Had he been given incorrect information, it would have been a different matter. I also believe that the Swedish rules for work permits for immigrants are among the simplest, most transparent and least arbitrary in the world. But you know more than me about that.

Hah, I just noticed that you consult to a tjänstepension company!

My experience with MV on the phone is that they won't answer any specific questions about the rules. According to some migration attorneys I spoke with, many of the rules are undefined and they make them up as they go. Did you see the one about the guy who was deported for not taking _unpaid_ vacation? Try to find _that_ requirement on lagen.nu ;)

Everywhere I've worked and everywhere I've interviewed with in the last 2 years has had employees get deported. In all cases, they (the companies) claim that the information that they got from the big HR consultancies and from Migrationsverket was faulty, and they're paying the price now. I'm not saying that it's okay to break the rules, but I will say that if breaking them accidentally is so common, something is wrong with the system.

Every job offer I've ever received in Sweden (5) has been illegal on the first pass, violating various requirements of work visas. Violations are typically things like tjänstepension not starting until after the 6 month trial period. The most common is that the job ad was only posted on LinkedIn and Indeed, but not on Arbetsförmedlingen.

Two of my friends got hit because their employer insurance plans didn't become "active" until their second day at work. You know, those plans that your employer takes out on your behalf and you can't even see if they exist, let alone when they started? So it goes.

In 2014 I would have agreed strongly with "among the simplest, most transparent and least arbitrary in the world", but in 2018 I would add the caveat "but worse than most of Europe."

tjänstepension - is that some kind of social security?

Yes, it's an employer-paid pension that is very similar to the U.S. 401(K). Depending on how you slice it, Swedish pensions are divided into 3 or 4 layers:

1) Income pension - equivalent to U.S. social security. Taken out of everyone's taxes, and you have no control over it.

2) Premium pension - it's considered part of Income pension (1), but when you earn above some amount it goes into this bucket and you can tell the government a bit about how you want it to be invested.

3) Occupational pension (tjänstepension) - An "optional" employer-paid pension that you have some direct control over. Depending on the management company, you can either choose between a few fixed investment schemes, or you can have full control over it and invest in stocks/mutual funds. It is "optional", but mandated by the unions, so not really optional.

4) Private pension - your own personal account, like an IRA

There were a bunch of deportations over tjänstepension problems. Companies that were not in unions paid employees that were not in unions and didn't offer the same tjänstepension as the union agreement. Migrationsverket decided (also in 2015) that the exact terms of the union agreements are required for all non-EU citizens, even if they aren't involved with the unions. (If you are Swedish or from the EU, there is no legal requirement.)

I got in trouble because the union requires a 4.5% tjänstepension contribution from your employer. My employer paid 8% to mine, but it was structured in a different way... which we later found out was unacceptable.

There are too many rules for people to keep track of all of them and they have to be interpreted and enforced with discretion.

So, yes if you get whipped in Singapore for spitting out gum, that is wrong on their part. It is rude to spit gum but you don't deserve to be physically beaten for it.

I don’t see how you can possibly claim the existence of an absolute moral law demonstrating that Singapore is wrong. Your own comment is yet more evidence that law is extemely well publicized, and although I might not myself vote for such a law, I don’t have the arrogance and naïveté to think they are somehow definitely incorrect.

There are things which we can be certain are wrong: murder, rape, etc. A law that punishes gum chewing to some extent or another is not one of them.

You keep changing the terms of the debate.

Why are the standards suddenly "the existence of an absolute moral law"? You can't demonstrate that there is an "absolute moral law" against murder.

What does an absolute moral law have to do with how well the law is publicized? Note that my awareness of a law is not related to its morality.

And finally, you take the whole point -- that being whipped is an extreme punishment -- and you shove it into this form "to some extent or another." The debate is not about whether we ought to punish chewing gum but about the severity of whipping.

> You keep changing the terms of the debate.

That was my first post in this thread, so I’m not sure how I could have changed my position. I argued directly and solely against your claiming Singapore’s law is immoral; if by doing so I’ve somehow switched topics, the person solely responsible is you.

> Note that my awareness of a law is not related to its morality.

Not sure when I said this. I was, though, responding to your claim that “There are too many rules for people to keep track of all of them and they have to be interpreted and enforced with discretion.” Again, if anyone is trying to change the goalposts, it’s you.

> And finally, you take the whole point -- that being whipped is an extreme punishment -- and you shove it into this form "to some extent or another."

Presupposing that it is an extreme punishment for the crime is begging the question. My claim was that it is naive of you to think that you must be right in knowing what the correct penalty for a crime in a gray area like chewing gum, and that Singapore must be wrong.

On the other hand, apparently:

> You can't demonstrate that there is an "absolute moral law" against murder.

... so I am no longer even sure I come from a similar enough culture to attempt to relate Singapore’s to you.

> You can't demonstrate that there is an "absolute moral law" against murder.

Kant tried to.

Yes he did.

I would say that the grand project he undertook (the critiques of pure reason, practical reason and judgement), although great works in their own right, and a clear articulation of what philosophy is, ultimately failed in their project. (To provide us with guides for what is good, true and beautiful).

Immoral laws should be broken.

The law mostly works because people follow it, voluntarily, most of the time.

And if enough people break the law (and take steps to prevent themselves from being caught and avoid all consequences, obviously), then eventually the immoral law may as well not be the law because it becomes effectively unenforceable.

"The rules are the rules" is never a good excuse. What matters is the underlying intent and reason for the law.

In this situation, the intent of the law is to prevent employees from being exploited. So a judge should look at it and say "obviously, this person wasn't being exploited, and it is not the intent of the law to deport them in this case".

All this might be true but the discrepancy between the way the rules are enforced for those who take care of themselves and show potential for being of benefit to society versus the near total lack of deportation of criminal foreigners is having a big impact on the way people view the actions of the justice department and other institutions. It has now come so far that there are nearly daily occurrences of this lackadaisical attitude from prosecutors and district courts where criminals are slapped on the wrist for aggravated rape, robbery, manslaughter and downright murder.

The government - I'm tempted to put the term between scare quotes - claims that they want to work towards the reduction of negative attitudes towards migrants from the Middle-East and Africa but their actions lead to exactly the opposite.

This is not just a big-city problem either. I live in a small community (13.000 people spread over about 350 km2 in the west of Sweden) where the local council has hired two recent immigrants for a project to "promote integration and reduce fighting between immigrant factions" at the local primary school. Unbeknown to outsiders but known by the council was that one of them had been arrested for trying to kill members of an opposing clan. Both have been arrested for sexual assault against girls at the school. Neither of them faces deportation, neither of them faces prison. No explanation nor apology from the council for their lack of oversight and common sense and - probably even worse - no way to discuss this without being labelled 'racist'.

Actions like these only serve to increase the pressure in an already turbulent country. Going by the letter of the law where it concerns people who mean well while turning a blind eye - and even showing consideration and understanding - towards criminals has the potential to break one of the main factors which made it possible for Sweden to become the success it was: the large trust in society and its institutions. Without this trust there is no way for the current welfare state to continue, and without the welfare state Sweden will no longer be the country it used to be.

2018. People have to explicitly state that they are not nazis when stating the obvious.

Thanks leftists.

I would accept those tight rules if Sweden did something to their immigration disaster i.e. the endless numbers of migrant gangs and criminals terrorising Sweden without getting deported.

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