The Swedish Sambo Visa in 2015/2016 Part 11: Can I visit while my permit is processing?

YES.

I am going to share with you now the "real deal" about visiting Sweden while your permit is processing.

It is not "new news" that Migrationsverket can be quite inconsistent with their answers to our questions.  Furthermore, they often times give incorrect information. That has been the single most frustrating part of this experience; it has even been worse than how long the waiting time is.  The constant stress, fear, paranoia, confusion, lack of trust, and inhumanity felt by conflicting and wrong information has made what is already a trying time, unbearably impossible to deal with.

If there is one thing that we can do to help ease the searing pain of separation, it is to be able to visit our loved one. So, let's go through the stages of grief as you research whether you can visit your love while you wait.

The Swedish Sambo Visa in 2015/2016 Part 10: The Sambo Manual (FAQs and Resources)

Warning: This is an "Information Overload" post!!

It's been some time since I last posted, because I've spent the past month in Sweden with my love for the holidays.  And we just passed a major milestone: 1 year since we applied for my UT!! WOO-HOO!!

For the past 2 months I have been planning my 1-year anniversary post.  I was going to make it all about our memories, things I had learned about myself and the world, sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns. :D But let's be real: we all need information right now, so I have put together the following masterpiece: The Sambo Manual.

I have already provided some extensive guides for the beginning part of the Sambo Visa process. You can find the topics at the following links: 

Part 1:  What is the Swedish "Sambo" Visa?

Part 2: The Application Process and Processing Times

Part 4:  The Interview 

Part 7b:  Current Application Timelines Statistics

Part 8: Understanding the New Immigration Laws (including Maintenance Requirements)

Those parts give a very detailed (in most cases) run down of each topic.  Now I would like to summarize some key points, questions, and offer resources for those trying to investigate this process for themselves.  The topics are organized in the following sections, color-coded for ease of identification if you want to scroll to a particular section:

Table of Contents

A.  Key Definitions and Acronyms 

B.  Application Process (including Quick Links)

C.  Overview of Processing Times (and your legal rights)

        1.  Processing Times

        2.  Your legal rights to a timely decision

D.  Technicalities, Loopholes, Options, and Applying for "Priority"

E.  Maintenance Requirements

F.  The Queue System

        1.  How it (is supposed to) work

        2.  "E3" and Technical Failures

G.  The Lifetime of a Residence Permit (from UT to Citizenship and the Appeals Process) 

H.  Supplying "additional information" to MV

I.  Other Resources 

J.  FAQs

Current Refugee Crisis Immigration Statistics (Latest update: 15 March 2016)

This post used to be part of my "New Immigration Rules" post, but that post was getting way too long and sloppy.  So, I have moved everything over here.

Here is just some ongoing information and statistics on the refugee crisis, to help you determine where Sweden (and the rest of Europe) is at in terms of being bogged down by immigration.  It is very important to read the definitions of what a Refugee, someone in need of Subsidiary Protection, and those in need of "Other Protection" are, in order to understand what rights are being granted.  All definitions (as well as the new immigration rules for asylum seekers) can be found in my blog post here.

Current Immigration Statistics - Q4 2015

*Red highlights are just to remind me what numbers need to be updated each quarter when new data is released.  Apologies for the annoyance*

For those of you who are statisticians like me, I pulled some EuroStat reports on the refugee crisis felt among the EU28 member states of the European Union.  Note that these stats are only currently available as of Q4 2015 (which would be as of 31 December 2015).  EuroStat has a 3-month lag, which means that this data was published March 3, but the numbers are only as of 31 December. I will update the info graphs as soon as new ones are available. The links to the EuroStat page are all imbedded in the titles of the charts below, in case you want to look into the source data, footnotes, etc. Click on the images to make them larger, or click the chart title link to be redirected to the source data.