Swedish Migration Agency’s processing of citizenship cases

When assessing an application for Swedish citizenship, the Swedish Migration Agency is to examine whether the person meets the legislative requirements. The Swedish National Audit Office considers that some elements of the procedures are unclear and that there are deficiencies in both the decision-making documentation and processing systems. For example, the Swedish Migration Agency’s assessment of residency is to some extent based on uncertain information. The same applies to the assessment of identity. In almost one-third of granted citizenship applications, the applicant is unable to prove their identity. The Swedish National Audit Office notes that in these cases, it is a challenge for case officers to examine if and when applicants can be granted exemption from the requirement of a proven identity. There are also instances of the Swedish Migration Agency receiving information that may suggest that citizenship should not be granted in a case, but that does not trigger an alert in the processing system.

Furthermore, the Swedish National Audit Office notes that the lack of adequate organisation for processing support poses a risk of failure to assess cases uniformly. This is partly because there is a lack of sufficiently clear and readily available supportive documents and partly because the forums that exist to promote uniform assessments and working methods do not function sufficiently well. This can lead to rejection for individuals who qualify for citizenship, or citizenship being granted to those who do not qualify.

The Swedish National Audit Office considers that processing times are unreasonably lengthy for citizenship cases that the Swedish Migration Agency deems to be demanding in terms of investigation. These cases account for about 75% of all applications for citizenship. The active investigation time for these cases is usually only a small proportion of the total processing time. This is mainly due to a long queue time before the case is assigned to a case officer. In a median case, the queue time accounts for 82% of the processing time. The applicants who have been in the queue for the longest time have been waiting for more than four years. Once assigned to a case officer, demanding cases can often be investigated as quickly as cases that have been classified as straightforward ones and have therefore been investigated directly.

The Swedish Migration Agency’s management by objectives, combined with production requirements and the possibility for case officers to postpone more challenging cases, has further increased the risk of unreasonably long processing times for demanding cases. The current management by objectives creates incentives at several levels to prioritise more straightforward cases, while those which require more investigation may have to wait for several years without action. The Swedish Migration Agency’s current order of priority also means that the Agency virtually does not process cases with the longest queue times. The Swedish National Audit Office considers that there are several uncertainties that, taken together, means that it may take a long time before all applicants can have their cases concluded without unreasonable delay.

In 2018, a new Administrative Procedure Act entered into force. This introduced the possibility for individuals to submit a request to conclude a case to speed up a government agency’s processing of a case that had been unreasonably protracted. Due to the Swedish Migration Agency’s lengthy processing times, the majority of citizenship applicants submit such a request. The consequence is that the Swedish Migration Agency has primarily processed cases in which applicants have requested to have their case concluded, while other cases have been given lower priority.

The Swedish National Audit Office considers that the Swedish Migration Agency’s processing has reinforced the adverse consequences of the request to conclude a case. In the period between 2019 and 2021, thousands of applicants’ requests to conclude their case were automatically rejected. The Swedish Migration Agency does not have a plan for the conclusion of the cases for this group.

The Swedish National Audit Office also considers that, despite being aware of the adverse consequences that the introduction of the request to conclude a case has had for individuals, the Government has not taken adequate measures.