Open letter to all about the problems that work permit holders facing.

Dear All,

Moreover, recently migration agency has included a new clause to the law that salary should be according to the collective agreements each and every month of entire work permit period. Which makes us more worried about the whole process?

48 months (4 years) to get a permanent resident ship is a long time and if we need to work 44 months of those 48 months (around 4 months are paid vacations) with a constant speed then it would be really difficult for us. Because there could be several unavoidable situations due to what salary could be lower than the collective agreements even though we follow collective agreements entire period for those who have hourly contracts.

In 4 years people might need to take leave without pay (tjänstledig) sometimes for different personal and social reasons like visiting family and friends, marriage or due to some family crisis and etc.

If someone has a marginal time based contact which gives him 13500 sek/month.

If he has some banking work or need to go to some other offices or some other personal issue and take one single day leave of absence or sometimes employer unable to provide some hours due to slow business then his salary might be less than 13000 sek or less then his collective agreements allowed salary.

Another reason to get lower salary is that our work permit is limited to specific employer first 2 years and to specific profession next 2 years. When we see our hours going down even though we cannot work somewhere else to fulfill requirements for extension due to employers binding.

On the basis of above real life scenario, if someone have couple of months lower salary during these 48 months, is not he or she might get a chance to full fill those months by working and staying in Sweden? Should not it be consider that any one need time to integrate during first year of work permit or during switching jobs and gradually increase the income year after year?

Some people might have worked several places due to the survival, but isn’t it necessary to find out why they are doing this? If someone comes to know that he is going to lose the present job and at the same time if he gets a small job offer shouldn’t he grab it and continue both parallel and wait for the bigger contract so that he can apply for work permit? It is evident that most of the small companies do not want to apply for work permit in the beginning. In such a condition shouldn’t he or she get another chance?

In general the whole work permit system allows us to pass through a very tiny tunnel which is really difficult and the new addition will make it even harder. This law does not allow us to search jobs anywhere else then arbetsförmedlingen, does not allow us to change employer/profession smoothly or gradually therefore some people might be affected by bad working conditions or getting lower salary, If employers unable to provide insurance or follow the collective agreement then as a employee we have nothing to do. As a result migration agency sending work permit holders home due to violating the law. But here we are not committing any crime. It is the real life situation which is not covered by the law.

For any kind of unintentional issues please give us a chance to full fill the requirements while staying in Sweden.

Most of us converted to work permit visa from Student visa and started contributing to Swedish economy by our hard work without any kind of socio-economical supports. But we proved that we are potential and we are into the workforce right after finishing our studies. Beside our jobs we developed ourselves by learning Swedish language and involved us in different social activities. We are living here more then 6/7 years, we have jobs, families, home and everything here in Sweden and we have already became strangers in our countries, we do not have anything left there. We are almost integrated here, now it’s just a matter of time and right policy which will allow us to be integrated fully. We are so much associated with the Swedish society that we cannot think our life without Sweden. If someone has missed few months salary due to any unavoidable reason please extends his/her work permit for the same amount of months before applying permanent resident ship. Please give us a chance to fulfill the requirements while staying in Sweden. It is too difficult to go back and coming back and then starting from the beginning with families.

We believe that Swedes people are generous, logic oriented and we are not asking any economical support. We just need better policy based support to integrate our self to the society without leaving Sweden. We promise that we will keep playing potential economic and social role in Sweden.

Sincerely

Work Permit Holders Association

Org. no:802502-5860