The Swedish Sambo Visa Process in 2015 Part 9: Anomalies & Conspiracy Theories

Well, fuck.

^^If it weren't for the fact that I've learned my blog is useful to some people, I would have probably just ended my post there.  ;) 

Since I use my blog as a diary of sorts, here are the two main updates for me.  Maybe one day I'll reminisce over these sketchy times with a bottle of overly-priced Systemet wine as I re-read these old memories :)

1.  Johan and I celebrated our 11-month applicationversary last week.

It was the quickest month of waiting since the very beginning.  I am actually shocked at how fast it went, but I think it had everything to do with remaining occupied and active in helping others.  A sense of purpose does the soul good.  I've been working on my 1-year applicationversary post, and I just can't wait to click "publish"; it's a day I have been dreaming to pass for the entirety of 2015.

2. I'm in Sweden!  ....for a couple weeks ;)

Due to an extreme stroke of generosity by my company, I have been in Sweden since last Thursday and get to stay until January 17th (the day after our 1-year applicationversary) to spend the holidays with my love!!  The best part about this is that my job is letting me work from a distance.  If all goes well and this is successful, it's the closest I'll get to guaranteeing I'll be allowed to keep my job when I relocate to Sweden, after MV decides that anyone capable and willing to wait 14 months to be reunited with the person they say they love, PROBABLY has a real and verifiable relationship deserving of a residence permit.

Out of fear of violating the Alien's Act, I wrote MV on their website requesting them to note my travel dates so as not to render a decision while I was in the country.  They wrote me back and said to email my information to Migrationsverket@Migrationsverket.se.  I forwarded my flight itinerary and received the following response.  Sweet!!

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Now, onto the "Well, fuck" topics.

I have been increasingly involved in the Waiting Community (ie, the various social media groups of people also stuck in the queue for permits) and I've been trying to piece together the evolving picture of MV and what's going on.  I don't know how best to organize this all, so maybe a list will have to suffice.

1.  The added frustration of Copy/Paste Answers

Listen - I get it.  It's the only way they can help focus more time on our cases (and possibly streamline their communication with us.  I mean, how much have we all bitched about getting 50 different answers to the same question from 50 different customer service reps?)  I suppose custom responses for thousands of homogeneous questions (ad nauseum) is a terrible waste of time.

BUT.  I mean... for a process that already makes you feel like a disenfranchised and alienated number in a poorly-functioning queue where every 10th person seems to get to skip the line a few places, it just kind of blows to not even get the dignity of informative responses to serious inquiries.

If it's so much of a pain in the ass, why don't they just double the application fee? Or charge a fee for each real answer we want to get?  That goes for you too, JO.

2.  Migrationsverket confesses to "growing pains"

We have begun to see an increasing share of messages received from and/or published by Migrationsverket indicating the failure of their "digitized system".

Transparency in MV's processing system is difficult to come by.  What we can see in the Application Statistics is that some people get decisions and interview emails way out of turn, but we can't figure out why. Earlier in November, I received (for me, at least) the first indication that MV was fessing up to a botched online system when a spokesperson wrote back to my mother in law (full letter was published on my blog here) and said the following:

"Utvecklingen mot längre väntetider har skett under en längre tid och den beror inte i huvudsak på flyktingsituationen utan på andra saker. Bland annat har övergången till digital handläggning varit förenad med tekniska problem som skapat fördröjningar."

Which translates in English to:

"The trend towards longer waiting times has been the case for a long time, and it does not depend primarily on the refugee situation, but on other things too. Among other things, the transition to digital processing has been associated with technical problems that have created delays."

No, I don't condone violence.  But sometimes I would like to throw a steamy pile of donkey poo at all the excuses we hear.

Since that message, we have seen others share personal messages received by spokespeople of Johansson or Danielsson who confess to the issues with the digital system.  We can only trust they are telling the truth and not using that as an easy scapegoat, although for a country that prides itself on being the "Silicon Valley of Europe", it is quite embarrassing that they didn't properly test their platform before transitioning the whole system onto it, and not debugging it, no less. I mean... they made the transition back in April.  How long does it take to fix?

But then again... historic migration crisis.  I get it.  I'll move on.

We came across an October forecast report on MV's own website that also discusses the matter.  I haven't bothered to translate this 70 page report, but I sent it to another migration stats aficionado in Sweden to help peel out the important parts, including what he sent me below:

"I april infördes förändringar i handläggningssystemet som innebar att den övervägande delen av alla nya ärenden i de tre ärendekategorierna anknytning, arbetstillstånd och studerandeärenden kunde handläggas digitalt från början till slut. Det nya digitala systemet har lett till flera oklarheter bland annat i handläggningsrutiner samtidigt som arbetet med scanning och screening krävt mer resurser än beräknat. De tekniska delarna av det digitala ärendehanteringssystemet fungerar tillfredställande om än otillräckligt för att kunna höja produktiviteten." -- page 40   

"Handläggningsrutinerna har inte fungerat utifrån den digitala processen, vilket skapat  problem vid kompletteringar av ärenden bland annat mot utlandsmyndigheterna. IT‐stödet har visat sig  fungera bra för kompletta ärenden och mer okomplicerade ärenden. För nämnda anknytningsärenden är  förhållandena det motsatta med flertalet komplicerade och äldre ärenden. Antalet öppna ärenden är också  en bidragande orsak. IT‐systemet är i grunden baserat på ett ”flöde utan stopp”. För att komma över vissa  av svårigheterna har ytterligare utbildningar genomförts för att ge ett gemensamt synsätt på bland annat  handläggningsrutiner samt hitta lösningar på scanningsproblematiken." -- page 41

Basically, all of this says that there have been unforeseen technical problems which killed MV's pipe dream of a 4-9 month wait time.  They rolled out the digital system in April which was why wait times downshifted from "14 months average" to 4-9 months (for those of us in the "middle group").  But then they realized a crap ton of problems + a worsening migration crisis, and they now say that these (plus "other issues") negated any hoped-for benefits of efficiency.

My opinion? They were spectacularly overoptimistic and did not properly stress-test the system \
efore implementing.

But the best was this.  An individual in one of the support groups wrote a letter to Ministry of Migration and Justice, and received the following response:

Hej [xxxxxxxx]!

Tack för ditt mejl till justitie- och migrationsminister Morgan Johansson. Jag har blivit ombedd att svara. Jag förstår att du och din fru befinner er i en pressad situation, men varken ministrar eller tjänstemän i Regeringskansliet får ingripa i eller kommentera självständiga myndigheters hantering och beslut i enskilda ärenden. Det beror på bestämmelser i en av våra grundlagar som förbjuder s.k. ministerstyre.

Antalet asylsökande i Sverige är för närvarande historiskt högt och innebär en utmaning för hela samhället. Trots att åtgärder vidtagits för att öka prövningskapaciteten har utvecklingen på senare tid inneburit att asylsökande får vänta allt längre på beslut, i dagläget upp till två år. Men den ökade belastningen påverkar dessvärre även handläggningen av andra ärendeslag negativt.

För att förkorta handläggningstiderna och öka servicen till sökande och andra berörda pågår ett arbete på Migrationsverket med att digitalisera handläggningen av uppehållstillståndsärenden. I dagsläget upplever dock Migrationsverket inkörningsproblem i vissa ärendeslag, t.ex. anknytningsärenden, vilket bidrar till längre handläggningstider i många fall.  

Regeringen har, bl.a. i Migrationsverkets regleringsbrev, framhållit vikten av ett fortsatt arbete med digitalisering. Ambitionen är att detta ska bidra till en kortare väntan på beslut.

See the line above that is underlined? I used Google Translate to help me with "inkörningsproblem" because I had never heard that word before, and according to the engine, it translates too,  "teething problems".

Teething problems? This goes far beyond "teething problems". This is not just a minor growing pain that a swab of Novocaine can ease.  Maybe hardcore drug or alcohol usage can dull the pain for some of the applicants, but to call this system flop nothing more than a growing pain is, at the very least, insulting to everyone - including the MV workers slaving away at dealing with the consequences of a system that was not ready to roll out.

3.  Wait forever for an interview...unless you applied after October 2015

For those who applied between February 2015 and October 2015, sparse interview emails have been issued.  At the time of this post (23 December 2015), we are tracking 244 cases.  Of those 244 cases:

• From July 2014 - December 2015, 50.4% of tracked applicants (123 out of 244) have received an interview email.
• From February 2015 - December 2015, 16.2% of tracked applicants (21 out of 130) have received an interview email
• From October 2015 - December 2015, 20.8% of tracked applicants (5 out of 24) have received an interview email.

While 5 of 24 applications may seem trivial, fact of the matter is that 5 of our tracked applicants who applied in or after October 2015 have received an interview invitation whereas 91 people who applied before them (some of them EIGHT months beforehand) have not received the interview email.  Multiply these figures out across the 60,000 pending cases, and you have a messy situation on your hands.

I have sent a nice message to MV asking for a straight-forward explanation for this.  Others have called to ask for a reason, and have been told things such as "MV is trying out a new system", or simply, "It doesn't matter when you get the interview email, it doesn't affect the overall wait time."

Conspiracy Theories

One theory for this anomaly is that MV is testing the continuance of their digitized system.  They
seem keen on automating this process (as they should!), and it would make the most sense to simply automatically issue the interview invite within a few weeks of submitting the application.  I'm not sure how they can fully digitize their system when it may require a human to verify the correct documents were submitted with sufficient legibility, credibility and translation, but maybe that can come later in the process.  It could be that some cases are randomly selected to test this process right now.  This makes the most sense.

Another theory is that MV is a hot mess, and/or experienced a system glitch which accidentally issued interview emails to applicants ahead of their time.  This is just as plausible as theory #1 (no offense to MV; I mean, they have already confessed the suffering of significant technical problems).

4. Decisions are coming within 13.5 months... unless you're one of the un/lucky few!

There have been a strike of cases we track that received un-prioritized decisions between 9-12 months, while the rest of the population waits (on average) 13-14 months.  This can be infuriating.  Just a week or two ago, I experienced the first decision of someone who applied after me, but received their decision now.  Given I am so involved in tracking cases at this point, I had already prepared myself for this reality... but it still stung.

There is no discernible pattern, rhyme or reason for these "early" decisions.  Here are some examples:

These people all said they did NOT request priority, nor do they know why they received a quicker decision.  

Then there are those unlucky few who end up waiting 15-16 months, also for no known reason; no extra info requested, no second interview.... just *wait wait wait*.

Conspiracy theories

One theory for this is that MV is trying to have recent cases on hand that received decisions in less than a year to show authorities (JO?) that they are moving cases along faster than reality.  But this is dumb, because obvi those authorities would ask for a lot more information than a few cherry-picked cases.

A second theory is that there is a rogue MV case officer out there who is a vigilante champion of

those of us kärleksmigrants.  This hero puts on a cape and a mask after-hours once his colleagues have left, and delivers decisions to everyone at the bottom of the pile. This is just as plausible as theory #1, IMHO.

5. Steps to address MV's queue issue

In one of the support groups, a woman emailed Anders Danielsson.  Here is her post in the group, including her question and the response she received:

"Jag ställde några frågor till Anders Danielsson och team och fick svar från Informatör xxxxxxxxxx.

Min huvudfråga var, 'Jag undrar nu vad och hur ni har och gjort åtgärder för att komma ifatt i kön?' 

Svar: Jag beklagar att ni hör till dem som drabbats av våra långa väntetider. Tyvärr klarar Migrationsverket just nu inte att ge alla sökande besked så snabbt som de har rätt att förvänta sig. Vi har inte kunnat avgöra ärenden i samma takt som de har kommit in. För närvarande finns det 56 000 öppna anknytningsärenden, majoriteten av dem är förstagångsärenden. För tre-fyra år sedan var motsvarande siffra 28 000. Det pågår en rad insatser för att vända utvecklingen. Här är några av åtgärderna:

• Prioritering av gamla ärenden (äldre än 8 månader).
• Operativa chefen fastställde ett beslut (OCA 59/2015) under sommaren som definierar ansvar och prioriteringar för inkommande tillståndsärenden.
• Den 30 september fastställde operativa chefen ett särskilt ansvar till skanningsenheten att skicka ut ärenden (som inkom innan 1 oktober) där en ambassadutredning krävs. Då balansen av dessa ökat markant.
• Det har även rekryterats nya medarbetare inom tillståndsprövningen över hela landet under hösten och dessa förväntas öka produktionen (vilket redan skett under nov/dec 2015).
• Nytt produktionsuppdrag för 2016 kommer att beslutas jan-feb.
• Översyn och uppföljning av de gemensamma arbetsmetoderna kommer att ske med samtliga regioner i början av 2016" -- Date: 22 December 2015

In quick translation, she asked the Ministry of Migration what they are doing (and how) to catch up with the queue and shorten wait times.

The response was apologetic, and then listed the following items:

• Prioritize the decisions of cases older than 8 months
• More oversight and upholding of policies and procedures by the Operating Chief for incoming applications, as of this summer.
• The number of cases requiring an "embassy investigation" (interview, I believe) has increased sharply, so for all cases received prior to October 1, the Operating Chief has been charged with the special task of scanning in all cases into the system*
• Apparently MV is hiring and "licensing" new employees, as they already have done in (or for?) Nov/Dec 2015
• "New production tasks for 2016 will be decided upon in Jan/Feb" <-- whatever that means.
• Review and monitoring of all procedures will be conducted in early 2016. <-- Shouldn't that be done routinely already?

*I don't really grasp the full context of this, but I sense that this might be regarding a sharp increase in paper applications.  These cases take longer because they require the paperwork to be scanned in and logged properly, and perhaps this means that to hurry those cases along so they don't lag too far behind the others, the boss is being charged with getting all of those cases finally scanned and set properly into the queue for processing. I could be wrong, though.

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For now, those are the updates.  Of course there is a lot more to talk about, but I don't want to beat a dead horse.  I think that after a certain amount of time (for me, it was getting into the double digits of wait time) it really stops mattering so much.  It's like, you fight depression and incredulousness up until maybe the 8th or 9th month, and it all wanes into true resignation to reality.  And then after that, you start transitioning into this hopeful twilight of the wait where you realize that even if your worst fears are realized (which, for us, was a 14-month wait), you're at least close enough to the finish line that you know you can stomach a few more months.  There is always the fear of something worse happening, but it is winter and times are a'changing even among the populous... and even during the more charitable season of the year.

So, as always, we wait.  Tis the time of year to be thankful for what we have, and today, I feel very grateful to have my love and this blog to give me some sense of purpose to occupy myself with during this wait.

It makes one wonder: will I ever even be able to transition to regular life once this is all over? I think so :)