(Important Update on 12 February 2016): The Swedish Sambo Visa in 2015 Part 8: Explaining the "New Immigration Rules"

NOTE (12  February 2016): For information on the pending "Maintenance Requirement" rules, please kindly navigate to my Swedish Sambo Visa Part 10: The Sambo Manual post , and scroll to Part E. Maintenance Requirements. In that post, you will find all the latest information I could gather on the impending Maintenance Requirements, as well as links to the official governmental proposal and press release which seem to indicate that all sambo applications submitted BEFORE 31 May 2016 will be EXEMPT from the new rules.

Please bear in mind that as of the date of this update, this is still a proposal.  It needs to be discussed, decided upon, and then implemented.  Anything could change.  So, please check back for more information, and still consider to weigh your options just in case the law turns out to affect some cases retroactively.

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On 24 November 2015, the Swedish parliament ("Riksdag") convened for a press conference. Therein, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven [Social Democrats / Socialdemokraterna ("S")] and Green Party [Miljöpartiet / ("MP")] co-leader Åsa Romson announced notable updates to the asylum seeking procedures in Sweden.  It was an "historic" day in terms of the controls and limitations they have realized are the only way to save the country from collapse.

The rules do not just affect asylum seekers, but also all relationship applications (like us sambo applicants) as well. Sweden's government homepage (http://www.regeringen.se) has an outline article generalizing the measures. The English version can be found here; the Swedish version (including video of the press conference) can be found here.

In addition, a very brief press release about these measures has been published on MV's website here.  Pay particular attention to the last 2 paragraphs of that article.

The Swedish Sambo Visa in 2015 Part 7b: Application Date Statistics (updated about once every 3 months) - Last update: 30 January 2017

IMPORTANT UPDATE (15 September 2016):  In order for this spreadsheet to remain a relevant resource, I have de-linked the "bigger spreadsheet" where we used to track over 1,000 cases from various sources.  I still have that data if anyone ever wants it for their own research purposes, but due to time constraints I have been unable to continue updating it.

Instead, I have linked up to a new spreadsheet maintained by the I Väntan På Familjen facebook admins.  While that groups is somewhat small, it is very diverse and a good microcosm of the queue as a whole.  It is the spreadsheet that I now use for my sporadic updates of The Sambo Summary (see below for more info)

The Swedish Sambo Visa in 2015 Part 7a: "Swedish Migration: A Brief History, and What is Happening Now"

As a prelude to my Part 7b: Application Date Statistics, I wanted to take a moment to discuss a very important and hotly contested topic that is affecting all of us applicants: Immigration.

A lot of very disturbing things have been occurring in Sweden recently.  The country is experiencing an unprecedented, record-breaking immigration crisis (and all the social disasters that come with it), and now is as good a time as ever to discuss the history of Sweden's migration to get the "bigger picture" of what is going on. These things should be understood for their full gravity in terms of implications to the country, as well as how it will all affect us.  But before we can understand current events, we must reflect on the past.

The Swedish Sambo Visa in 2015 Part 6c: A Response from Migrationsverket

In my blog post about the discontinuation of priority status, I had mentioned that I was going through some difficulties recently and, in a bit of a venting session, Johan said (threatened?) that he was going to file a priority request for us. He of course did not submit the request (we both knew there was no chance on this green earth we'd get it anyway), but it was also at this time that we learned he couldn't have filed even if he had wanted to.

And then, the 8-14+ month processing time update came.  I think that wrecked all of us a little bit. Johan and I both had our meltdowns.  And in Sweden, Johan's mom could do nothing but watch on and see what it was doing to her kids.  So she did as any mother does when she see's her child hurting; she hand wrote and mailed a letter to the director of Migrationsverket.

We were not made aware of the letter until the day she mailed it, and only Johan got to read a copy of it (he said it was very gentle and only expressed concern over the situation we all are in - especially the conflicting information we all receive). In less than a week, MV responded with a very thorough and direct email. I debated posting it here because it never feels right to publish emails. None of what was written was in any way bad or secret; it just is the principal of the matter, I guess.

However, I feel the letter was a well-written, data-supported and sincere response.  It was written by a sort of spokesperson for MV as I understand, and I appreciate how they did not sugar coat anything; their compassion and understanding of the situation sounded genuine, and the transparency via numbers makes one feel like MV is not trying to ignore that it is dealing with some severe logistical problems, and they are trying to address them -- it just is going to take time (which we all already knew, but there is a lot of damage control that can be done when someone comes out and just "tells it like it is", instead of giving people the run around and telling them to just be patient while it seems like the sky is falling every other week.)

And by sharing it, it may provide others seeking answers, something to digest.

I have anonymized the letter, redacted one sentence, and did my best to translate it (I improvised a bit; sorry!)   While it does not fix or change anything, or give me any increased cause for hope, it does no less give the cold hard truth, and a fair assessment of the current state of affairs.