Swedish parliament abolishes permanent residence visas for migrants | Hacker News Reader

Swedish parliament abolishes permanent residence visas for migrants

riksdagen.se

55 pointsCGMthrowaway82 comments

Context: Until very recently, Sweden had no language, income, employment, or skills requirement for citizenship, of which permanent residency was a pathway for. It now, as of 2026, has some basic requirements in these areas.

* 2025 citizenship requirements: <https://web.archive.org/web/20250315034218/https://www.migra...>

* 2026: <https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/...>

In completely unrelated news, Arabic is now the second most spoken language in Sweden after Swedish. <http://web.archive.org/web/20210511231225/https://digitaledi...>.

> The Riksdag voted in favour of the Government’s proposal which includes the abolition of permanent residence permits for people in need of protection and people who have been long-term residents in Sweden, as well as their relatives.

>The proposal is one component of the efforts to adapt Sweden’s regulatory framework for the granting of international protection and asylum procedures to the minimum guarantees set out in EU law. The purpose of the adaptation is to create better conditions for integration and to reduce social exclusion by reducing asylum-related immigration.

Not all route for permanent residence. Only for asylum seekers. Employment or academic based route are still there it seems.

Correct. This is decoupling LTR from Permanent residency, not banning permanent residency.

Employment and academic status are not permanent, nor are visum based on those without conditions.

Permanent residence was more akin to citizenship in that they were permanent and mostly unconditional. The discussion in Sweden around them often came into a discussion around what the difference between citizenships and permanent residence, and if that difference was meaningful.

The practical difference between Permanent residence and citizenship was that:

Swedish citizenship allows a person to be elected into parliament, employed by the police or work in the military.

Swedish citizenship are treated by other countries as Swedish citizens according to international relationships.

Swedish citizens that live aboard can vote in Swedish elections

That was it. Without permanent residence people need to become citizens to get the same rights as citizenship, as all other form of visums has conditions and limits.

Those are significant differences - I didn’t find anything saying Swedish born citizenship can be taken away.

While permanent residency can be taken away due to moving away from Sweden or for criminal activity

Only Swedish criminals can remain in Sweden - probably good for RoW

Citizens are mostly unconditional, so yes, Swedish citizenship are more permanent. There is discussion around revoking membership from people with double memberships, but it is in legal limbo since it may not be consistent with the constitution.

Permanent Residency were not removed if you moved away. It was also not removed if a person did criminal activity. There was a bit weird middle ground where people retained their permanent residency status, but was expelled from the country due to serious crime.

The asylum system is being massively abused. It's turning people in the UK into single issue voters.

Easy to make a snarky comments at Democrats US who always love to say “Follow the Nordic Model” “Follow Scandinavian countries” on almost every topic... Safe to say they wouldn't agree here.

But serious question here: What happened in Sweden that lead to this parliament move?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Democrats rightward shift

Just guessing it has to do with this: https://nri.today/swedens-crisis-immigration-bloodshed/

Too much immigration too quick, people got fed up from what I gather

Europe in general is seeing a reversal in their philosophy towards migrants, especially from the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey (MENAPT is the acronym governments use). It's probably the lack of integration into the host cultures and ghettoization of many areas. Japan is doing something similar too to the article.

I imagine they don't want to end up where the US is now.

Edit: is reality too upsetting for folks? Hopefully nobody was asleep when American candidates ran on immigration policy, their constituents voted based on that, and we ended up with the current politicians and the overall status quo? Or do people not see a causal chain here?

You mean the wealthiest country in the world with a thriving, educated, well-integrated Muslim population that earns well above the national average income?

People don't want to live in a mansion when it's on fire.

> Democrats US who always love to say “Follow the Nordic Model”

past performance is not indicative of future results

I'm not about to run out and suggest Finnish lunches or buy a tin of Surströmming for breakfast, but it might be nice to have a balanced budget.

Hold on hold on hold on, tell me about Finnish lunches, as from searching they sound pretty innocuous. (Surströmming I know of, no questions there)

Sorry, I conflated Finnish lunches and Norwegian matpakke in my head. Nothing wrong with Finnish lunch.

> Safe to say they wouldn't agree here

Maybe because they do not like to blindly follow the "leader", but instead prefer to judge for themselves?

Democrats don't want "bad" immigration as much as you do. No-one wants criminals or people who are unwilling to follow the law.

I am not an immigration expert, but blanket rules and blanket statements are seldom giving good results.

When the right says ban immigrants they sounds as stupid as when the left says ban billionaires.

marginal tax rates reached 94% in 1944 on income over 200k in the US. The high marginal tax regime gave rise to a period of relative equality. Nothing stupid about it - if a long right tail is a social ill (it is) then why have it?

That's different than chanting "Ban Billionaires"

Who would still be a billionaire at that tax rate?

Depends on what’s taxed at 94%. If it’s wages, they’ll just switch to passive 8ncome or stock/loans as they use now. If it’s all income, there’s going to be total change in the us compensation system.

If the average person was told they would have to pay 94% tax on high level income and other people could skirt it to remain billionaires there would be riots and/or changes in how income is defined, so in the end I don't think it would matter. It would have to settle one way or another in short order, although it could get pretty bloody.

For whatever reasons, there were weren’t riots in the 50’s. Perhaps the complex financial games weren’t present, or perhaps information flow was insufficient to reveal them. Or, maybe, income inequality was much smaller and there wasn’t ways to massively increase one’s holdings.

There were riots in the 60’s but money wasn’t anywhere near the top of the cause list.

I don't know how you simplify things so much... Do you want 94% tax on stocks? Why stop at stocks? How about property? Your house's net worth?

The social equality shouldn't be based on how much poorer we are in comparison to Musk, but can the poorest of us afford food, shelter, education and healthcare?

Can they afford it by having a decent work/life balance?

Our economic system creates billionaires as a side effect, but is there any other out there that is better and doesn't create billionaires?

At the end of the day, is our average citizen today better off than when they were in 1944?

If you want people to listen that are the questions you should ask and how you should market "socialism". Not "eat the rich" bullshit.

The average citizen in 1944 was in rubble, a factory, a jungle or on a beach in 1944. Compare it to, say, 1957.

If my stocks, property, or house's net worth is valuated in the hundreds of millions, then yes that should be heavily taxed too. You can't get that rich without relying completely upon the society and government around you to enable such wealth generation.

And people right now are hungry, living on the streets, not getting educated, and not receiving healthcare because of simple poverty. I don't know what world you live in where such things have been eliminated.

Many people do not have the option for a decent work/life balance right now.

Co-op businesses don't create billionaires and benefit all the workers rather than just a handful.

And pointing to improvements in technology over time does not make today automatically better. Technology wouldn't stop improving if billionaires didn't exist. In fact I can't think of a single invention that wouldn't exist without them.

How many people are dead and governments overthrown because some rich assholes wanted more and couldn't stand the idea of locals getting a few more cents in wages? I know someone with just a few million dollars to retire on after decades of work couldn't manage to get such operations pulled off.

> marginal tax rates reached 94% in 1944 on income over 200k in the US.

Tell me you’re young without saying you’re young.

Those headline rates were not the rates actually paid.

The quantity and scope of tax write offs at that time were substantial and often generous. The tax reform act of 1986 lowered the headline rates and substantially reduced the scope of deductions.

As such, referring to that “high taxation” era as some sort of halcyon days due to the tax rates is quite misguided.

If you ever want to hear a tax accountant get excited, talk to one who was practicing in the 80s. The stories you will hear…

Follow the Nordic model has never been anything but a fantasy.

All the Scandinavian countries put together have slightly more people than the NYC metro area and are extremely homogeneous in terms of ethnicity, religiosity, etc. as compared to the USA.

In short, it's never been a good policy testbed for the much much larger and more diverse USA.

American millennials who grew up fetishizing Europe as a progressive/socialist utopia are in for a rude awakening over the next couple of years. People forget Europe is a collection of literal ethno-states.

Europe is in a very dire place economically and anti-immigrant anger is reaching a boiling point in many countries (easier to point fingers at brown people than face up to decades of poor policy choices you yourself voted for).

At least Sweden is in relatively "better" shape than its peers. Germany, France, the UK, are also all drinking this cocktail but much worse; fiscally insolvent, unwilling to have kids, unwilling to pivot to new economic models, and scapegoating brown people while staring down the barrel of never-ending benefits cuts and tax increases (which will further kill their economy).

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

While Americans were ritually flogging themselves for being racist during the 2010s, nobody seemed to bother asking the question "Compared to what?"

Well, it turns out in the "progressive utopia" of the Nordics, immigrants face some of the highest rates of job discrimination in the developed world, with Sweden being in the worst group [1]. The US on the other hand is all the way on the other end of the spectrum, almost egalitarian in hiring by comparison.

[1] https://sociologicalscience.com/download/vol-6/june/SocSci_v...

Study says

> France is the country with the highest level of discrimination, followed by Sweden. By contrast, Germany, Norway, and the United States have lower rates of discrimination.

It specifically contrasts Sweden and Norway, you just make it a „Nordic“ thing through confirmation bias.

> People forget Europe is a collection of literal ethno-states.

Because they aren’t.

> The US on the other hand is all the way on the other end of the spectrum, almost egalitarian in hiring by comparison.

It says Germany is on the other hand of the spectrum, similar to the US.

Norway charts less racist because of the oil wealth. This is my point.

Being progressive is easy when you're rich. When the economy stops growing though, we learn that socialism and immigration are like oil and water.

This lines up exactly with the heel turn I'm talking about (that study is 7-8 years old, before Europes energy apocalypse). Germany, UK, France, etc are rapidly heading in the opposite direction now due to their de-industrialization. Anti-immigrant parties are all rapidly rising in support there (AfD is now Germany's most popular party for example).

Nobody wants to pay for "others" to show up on day 1 and start enjoying the fruits of the communal pie, when that pie is not growing.

When the pie is growing buoyed by the richest sovereign wealth fund in the world (Norway), suddenly we get charitable and progressive again.

There's no population or fertility crisis. The world's population isn't going to fall, it'll level off around 2100, nobody old enough to read this will be around, our kids and grandkids can decide for themselves.

Local populations will see very different trajectories, yes. Africa will see population growth and many other places will see steep decline. Societies can choose to keep their current system and take in immigrants, or choose to keep their "national character" (or whatever) and rejig their societies so the remaining productive parts pay for increasing numbers of old people. Grifters (Brexiters, MAGA, Le Pen, etc) will attempt to sidestep such obvious tradeoffs, but they will fail, hastening the decline of these societies. So the only crisis we have is people refusing to deal with reality's tradeoffs.

Happens to be the grifters are mostly pro fertility, make of that what you want.

They're pro-“fertility talking points” at least, but rarely in favor of economic and social policies that encourage child rearing.

I think so too. What strikes me most about "pro fertility" people, particularly the SV type, is that they don't seem to particularly like kids, as in spending time with them, playing with them, deriving joy from them. They seem very enamoured with the kids-as-cogs-in-the-system, with "legacy" with all sorts of other silliness except for the kids as kids.

Yup. Bring up a tax to pay for prenatal, neonatal and pediatric care, for instance, and you’ll separate the folks who care about children from the ones who found a new silly thing to argue about on Twitter.

The UN estimate is that population will peak in 2080, and that is widely considered to be an overestimate.

The UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees Article 34 says:

> The Contracting States shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalization of refugees. They shall in particular make every effort to expedite naturalization proceedings and to reduce as far as possible the charges and costs of such proceedings.

Sweden is a signatory and seems to be in non-compliance.

My understanding is that giving permanent residence means not naturalizing, and therefore this is a step towards compliance.

I'm not familiar with the Swedish system, but in the 2 immigration systems I am familiar with, permanent residence is a step you must take before naturalizing.

Is one of those in the EU?

No, although a quick search shows France also operates on this principal. Is there any counterexamples you are thinking of?

Italy has a long term residence card that is valid for 10 years, and renewable indefinitely, but the conditions for renew are absolutely not comparable to a green card for example. Just go out of the EU for a year and it's no more.

https://www.poliziadistato.it/articolo/ec-residence-permit-f...

This was adopted by Italy in 2007. So while I am not sure about it I suspect it's the same for all EU countries, since immigration papers are mostly governed by EU regulations and directives. What is your source for France having mandatory permanent residency prior to naturalization (unless it's permanent in the sense of renewable indefinitely)?

Edit: indeed, this is a bill for adopting rules laid out in the EU directive on immigration and asylum.

In those two immigration systems you are familiar with, what is the difference between permanent residence and naturalizing, and is there any benefit to get naturalizing rather than staying as permanent residence?

1. Leave the country for an extended period and return

2. (USA) Vote, make political contributions and run for (most) political office. (UK) run for MP

3. (USA) Sponsor family members for permanent residency (UK) get a family visa for your family.

4. (USA) Speed your spouse' eligibility for naturalization from 5 to 3 years.

5. Gain the benefits of travelling on a US/UK passport.

6. Work in national security jobs which require citizenship.

7. Not be at the whims of future changes in immigration law.

About 2% of Sweden's population are refugees (!). For contrast, for the US the figure is 0.1%

And it's not like they are in a border with an active war zone.

So? The convention says nothing about requiring a border with a conflict and nothing about a cap.

As I understand, asylum seekers are to stop at the first safe country. They don't get to pick wherever they want.

Each state is independently obligated not to return a refugee to a place of danger. The convention allows countries to make agreements to deport refugees to safe 3rd parties or stop refugees from transiting (like the EU has with Turkey). If Sweden finds another place for these refugees that's legal (and then that country has the obligation to eventually naturalize them).

Sweden is just not supposed to keep people in a permanent temporary state.

(Also, many asylum seekers just get on a plane, and for them Sweden may well be their first stop)

So I think calling them out for not helping enough is going to involve a lot of glass houses.

Economic migrants are not refugees, try again.

The article specifically says "reducing asylum-related immigration"

Freebies are an economic pull factor for seeking asylum where they are available.

They can ban immigration from the third world all they want but at some point, they'll have to confront the economic reality of a 1.42/couple fertility rate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden

That's every country these days, no one has a solution. Even giving people tens of thousands of dollars doesn't seem to help. It's not necessarily a problem with an economic solution, much as people like to say that it's due to poor work environments etc, because poor people have way more kids than middle class or rich people.

I'm sure there's some level of payment that would do it. Tens of thousands sounds like a lot, but it's a bit of a joke for a something that costs 10x more and takes up decades of your life.

...but there is data that there are issues upstream - there are fewer couples to begin with! That is not economical (economies of scale) suggesting that we are looking at changes in social structure rather than some kind of aggregate economic adaptation.

I've been thinking about what kind of payment it would take, and I think trying to offset the potential career of one of the parents would do it.

So maybe median salary for ten years or something for every couple with their first kid?

Tens of thousands of dollars? So ... nothing compared to real estate prices?

Not to mention how nothing it is compared to the cost of certain child care activities that one might have to pay for if one has a child with any health, neurological, developmental issues.

People are rightfully risk averse nowadays. Fuck the species if it just wants to bully its young into breeding.

> People are rightfully risk averse nowadays. Fuck the species if it just wants to bully its young into breeding.

i don't think birth rate is just because of money. never in history people had access or liberation on going childless like now [0]

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/07/25/reasons...

They can reduce or eliminate taxes on couples with kids...

Immigration is the solution. Producing a child and getting it college educated costs, to the parents and society, $400K+ (a 22 years ordeal with a lot of risks like the child growing into a drug user, criminal, etc.) Bringing in a college graduate immigrant - close to $0 in 0 time.

The same way like production of any products - if it is significantly cheaper to manufacture it say in China, it will be manufactured in China and imported, no matter what tariffs are, while domestic production will go down with overall increase of the efficiency of our civilization as a result.

You can only immigrate a finite number of people. People in those countries also are below replacement like India which is unprecedented. This is nothing to say of the social backlash mass immigration seems to be having across many countries.

>You can only immigrate a finite number of people.

The same like with any imports. Market responds to demand. China has 50M university students, US - 20M. That means that upon achieving US percentage (in probably 5-10 years) China can be having 80M students - sufficient enough to have some of that satisfy US demand for college graduates.

> People in those countries also are below replacement like India which is unprecedented.

Quick google shows that population growth in India is considered a problem, and so they actively trying to decrease birth rate.

>This is nothing to say of the social backlash mass immigration seems to be having across many countries.

Any technological (and mass migration is a result of technological progress) shifts and its consequences cause social stress. Successful societies adapt.

When you start giving something comparable to the actual cost of having a child, it's going to matter.

You need more than one bedroom to have a child, that increases the price of a home in Vancouver by 200k. What should I do with tens if thousands?

The solution is obvious:

Remove commuting by encouraging remote work, incentivise dumb phone use or penalise smart phone use, create affordable property prices and secure future pensions, incentivise no televisions and create an environment where men and women can co-mingle naturally. You're right tens of thousands isn't going to cut it.

Basically apartment complexes with plenty of facilities like cafes, libraries, parks, restaurants and sports facilities and micro mobility solutions for transport surrounded by nature. Effectively reversing some of the trends we've established over the past few decades.

The reason this isn't done is because it wouldn't grow the economy, it would shrink the economy. You're effectively telling people to work less, have more leisure time and spend less.

Raising kids is expensive and tens of thousands doesn't cover any significant portion.

However, it's not just money alone that is the problem. Money helps a lot, but like any complicated problem, it's got multiple front. Money for one, but another is just child care in general. This is based on my experience and other parents I interact with, but child care is fucked up. Not just costs. When I was growing up, my grand parents were very involved. They would watch my sister and I in the evenings sometimes or take us for a weekend or we would go to their house to swim in the summer. For some period, my grandparents had us in the summer while mom and dad were working. There is a phrase of, "it takes a village to raise a kid." And that village was close family and friends. Grand parents would pick us up from after school events. Aunt and uncle would watch us with their kids and my parent would watch theirs, vice-versa. It was grand parents, neighbors, aunts and uncles. Now looking at me raising my kids and my friends doing the same, it all on just the two of us (myself and spouse). Grand parents don't want shit to do with their grand kids unless it's Christmas diner. And that is a pretty common thread amongst every other parent I interact with. And day care doesn't exactly solve that. Day care solves the regularly scheduled care Monday through Friday during business hours. Not even forgetting that some places, where I live, its a 9 month wait list to get into any daycare. And then full-time care pretty much consuming and entire parent's paycheck. It doesn't solve the, dad's car broke down, Mom needs to go pick him up and help out, but can't exactly pack the kids up. When that happened to my mom and dad, mom dropped me and my sister off with my grand parents.

very on point.

Every country? No. Every European country? Yes.

Even India is below replacement now.

If all you need are labourers to prop up the economy there are billions of people willing to work on temporary visas.

I don’t think “your population is drying up so you better replenish from other countries” is a winning pro-immigration argument.

It has been proven again and again that immigration, even massive like what happened in Sweden a decade or so ago, isn't even a solution to that problem, so I don't know what you are talking about.

Automation.

Indeed, and with the inguinuity and enterprise of the Swedes they may be able to separate the concerns of an assumed problem space and an assumed solution space.

For now they seem to be dealing with observed problems, and applying actionable solutions. If they keep that up they may be able to resolve all manner of economic issues.

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