The agency’s report raises concerns about student visa abuse
SWEDEN
The Swedish Migration Agency believes it has found indications that significant numbers of international students are abusing their residence permits, but not everyone agrees on the criteria used to make that claim.
A recent one Report“Misuse of residence permits for studies”, reflects the results of an investigation of Pakistani students in particular who were granted residence permits in 2020 to complete two-year master’s programs at the universities of Halmstad and Linnaeus.
The report indicates that close to a third of the Pakistani students applied to Sweden with the primary intention of working rather than studying and did not apply for their residence permit for the second year of their degree. As such, they risk violating labor market legislation and being exploited by the restaurant industry in Sweden.
Although the focus is on Pakistan, the study also points to widespread misuse of visas by students from other countries.
According to the Swedish Higher Education Agency’s (UKA) statistics, the five countries with the most applications for residence permits for studies in Sweden in 2020 were: India (2,140), China (2,089), Pakistan (995), Bangladesh (732). ) and Iran (596).
In a report published in The university teacher, said Abraham Haro, head of unit at the Migration Agency, about the background to the report: “We wanted to look at whether there is abuse of residence permits for studies … There was no theory that we wanted to pursue, and we had to choose a group of applicants to focus on. But we haven’t looked at abuse of the system in general.”
Factors behind the “addiction”
In the same The university teacher In the article, the Swedish Migration Agency mentions an oversupply of places for international students and low language proficiency requirements as factors that contribute to the abuse.
The report states that the Swedish University and College Association (SUHF) raised the language requirements for student applicants from Bangladesh ahead of the autumn semester 2020, a step which caused the number of applicants to decrease by 30%: from 1,042 in 2019 to 732 in 2020.
In addition, the authority claims that higher education institutions have strong incentives to accept foreign students without setting particularly high entry requirements, as tuition fees are an important source of income for many of them.
The report also cites legislation as a main facilitator of the abuse. International students in Sweden are currently allowed to work full-time, or more, alongside their studies and can apply for a work permit after completing one semester’s (30 ECTS or European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System) studies.
Population Register
The results in the report were facilitated by the fact that Sweden has among the most comprehensive population registers in the world.
The registry data allowed investigators to check the distance between the work visa applicants’ registered university and their residential address one year after arriving in the country.
At the Linnaeus University in Kalmar, only 20% of the Pakistani students lived at the study center after one year, and in Halmstad that percentage was 43%.
It turned out that 38% of the Linnaeus students actually lived in the capital Stockholm, which is 410 kilometers from Kalmar, while 20% of the Halmstad students lived in Stockholm, 490 kilometers away.
The largest proportion of students who did not live on the two campuses turned out to be living in the larger cities of Gothenburg and Malmö.
In order to minimize abuse among international students, the Migration Agency, with the help of the Swedish Embassy in Islamabad, conducted personal interviews with potential students where they tried to establish whether the student had genuine intentions to study in Sweden.
In 2020, 26,718 such interviews were conducted in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.
The interviews focused on the student’s conditions, their knowledge of the course in Sweden to which they applied and their motivation for applying.
Over the past two years, 30% to 40% of those interviewed have been rejected, prompting Swedish universities to describe the approach as “paradoxical” because the more applicants the agency rejects, the more candidates the universities need to find to fill the demanding courses. tuition fees.
Question marks about evidence
Brita Lundh, head of educational support at Halmstad University, believes that there are question marks over the migration agency’s report.
– This is a very large and complex issue. It is terrible if there are individuals who are exploited, whether it is for human trafficking or illegal work. But this issue has many different aspects and we think that the Swedish Migration Agency needs a little more information before drawing these conclusions, she says. The university teacher.
Lundh said she disagreed with the reasoning in the report, which claimed that several higher education institutions have strong incentives to accept foreign students because tuition fees are an important source of income.
“The fee level is set based on full cost coverage, so it is not something we are allowed to make a profit on. The money that the students pay is preceded by quite a lot of work on our part to recruit them and help them when they arrive.
“If they don’t complete their studies, it’s a real loss for us. There is not a single university that is the least bit interested in accepting students who do not want to study.”
She said the only incentive that might exist is for foreign students to allow higher education institutions to offer more courses.
“We have many master’s programs that are difficult to fill without international students. You can call it an incentive, but there is no profit in it.”
Lundh was critical of the method used to report how many students drop out.
– We have looked at those who have been admitted to two-year postgraduate programmes. We do not have a higher percentage of international students who quit after one year than Swedish students do, she says.
Housing information
She was also critical of the use of residential addresses to determine abuse.
– You cannot draw conclusions about a lack of intention to study based solely on where people live, said Lundh.
“And when the report looks at the whereabouts of the Pakistani students during the pandemic, it’s incredibly strange. Distance learning was mandatory and people could live anywhere.”
She said that close cooperation with the Swedish Migration Agency is absolutely crucial for Halmstad University.
“It is very important to us that the students who come here and want to study get their residence permits on time. Every year I see students who cannot come because they did not receive their residence permit in time due to the long processing times of the Swedish Migration Agency.”
Stephen Hwang, rector of Halmstad University, commented University World News: “I think that Brita Lundh at Halmstad University has answered and commented in a satisfactory way. I have no further comment.”
Recruitment agents
The study pays particular attention to the approach of Pakistani recruitment agents to defend their argument that students come to Sweden primarily to work. It claims agents’ recruitment materials – some examples of which are reproduced in the report – offer the prospect of unlimited work as “a selling point” in recruiting Pakistani students.
While some of these agents are contracted by Swedish universities, others work independently and charge directly from potential students.
The study admits that it is difficult to determine the extent to which the agents are responsible for the abuses. It found no significant difference between the contracted agents and those working on their own: both use students’ access to work in Sweden as a “selling factor” in their information brochures.
Agneta Bladh, the immediate past chair of the Swedish Research Council, who led the internationalization investigation in Sweden in 2018-19, said that it was important to look at the number of international students who pass their final exams.
“Having international students from many different countries is a way to strengthen intercultural understanding among students… But this study is about something else. It is about the intention behind applying for a course and it shows that some students may not intend to study, but to work instead, she says. University World News.
– It is difficult to say how many students act in this way just by showing the students’ addresses. During the pandemic, online studies were the rule.
– More important is the number of students who pass the exam, also as a marketing issue for the higher education institutions concerned. Therefore, it must be studied carefully. It is important for the higher education institutions that students at Swedish universities are successful if they have the right conditions for their studies.”
Focus on Pakistan
Dr. Bernd Parusel, senior researcher at the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies (Sieps) and an expert on migration, expressed concern about the report’s focus on students from Pakistan.
“… International students in Sweden come from many different countries. It seems a little strange to me to draw general conclusions about a widespread abuse of residence permits for studies from only looking at a certain nationality.
“If the law allows international students to work as much as they want during their studies and to ‘change track’ and stay in Sweden for employment or self-employment reasons, I would be hesitant to talk about ‘abuse’ when people actually do it.”
Parusel said that the fact that Sweden allows international students to work during their studies, and to stay in the country for work or business after their studies, is a factor that contributes to Sweden’s attractiveness as a study destination.
– Attracting students and researchers has been considered important for opening up the higher education system to the world and creating dynamic, internationalized study and research environments. New restrictions, new control measures to prevent possible cases of abuse can counteract other policy objectives, such as attracting students and workers needed here.
“When Sweden introduced tuition fees for students from countries outside the EU in 2011, it led to a lower proportion of international students from developing countries. New policies to counter possible abuse of study permits could have a similar effect again and hit students from low-income countries harder than students from rich countries.”