Swedish Migration Agency ends citizenship freeze and launches ID checks
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In a post published Thursday, the agency announced that letters were now being sent to applicants, marking the start of the final step in the citizenship process - a newly introduced 'personal appearance' requirement. Applicants will not be able to book appointments until they receive the official notification by post.
"When you have received the letter, you should book a personal visit with us to verify your identity. This is called a 'personal appearance'," the agency wrote. "The requirement for a personal appearance applies to both those who are applying for Swedish citizenship now and those who have already applied and are waiting for a decision."
READ ALSO: Eight questions to understand Sweden's citizenship freeze
The agency told The Local earlier this month that approvals for citizenship by naturalisation - the most common route - had been on hold since April 1st awaiting a final decision on the routines regulating the system of in-person identification, a key part of new security checks the right-wing government coalition ordered in January.
Mats Rosenqvist, section head for the Migration Agency, told The Local last week that everything was ready in practical terms, and that his team was just waiting for the director general, Maria Mindhammar, to sign the directive enabling them to launch the new process.
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The directive was necessary to give the Migration Agency the legal right to ask applicants to come to one of their offices in person to show their ID – and to give the agency the power to, for example, reject the application of a person who fails to show up.
Now these legal requirements are in place, the agency will begin to invite applicants to 'personal appearances' at offices around Sweden. The Local understands that citizenship applicants will be able to attend at any one of the eight offices carrying out the service around Sweden. Applicants who are not resident in Sweden can instead present themselves at a Swedish embassy or consulate.
The Migration Agency has recruited extra staff and already set up the teams who will carry out the in-person identification checks.
The checks will be one of the final stages of the processing of an application, and at first, everyone will have to do it without any exceptions. It was initially reported that certain nationalities with biometric passports would be exempt and would instead be able to confirm their identity digitally via the Freja app, but the technological solution for that isn't yet in place, Rosenqvist told The Local.
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This means all applicants will initially need to make a personal appearance before they can be granted citizenship.
The extra stage in the process is the result of an order from the government and its far-right Sweden Democrat allies in January for the agency to take "forceful measures" to "as far as possible" prevent people who pose a threat to security or use a fake identity from being granted citizenship.
Experts had previously guessed that security checks would be tightened as a pretext of slowing down the awarding of new citizenships until stricter rules are in place in 2026 – a slowdown strongly hinted at by the government in an opinion piece in the DN newspaper in November.
Forssell has since denied that the underlying intention is to slow down citizenship applications, telling TT newswire that the point was only "to prevent people who pose a threat to security from being granted Swedish citizenship".
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Local Sweden
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2 days ago
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