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It was almost hard to believe in my own eyes when I read the debate article on labor immigration by the secretary of the Social Democrats party, Lena Rådström Baastad. She has an idea of immigration and employers that is not worthy of her role.
I represent the most typical employer whose success relies heavily on the ability to hire outsiders. In about four out of ten cases, labor immigration is about an IT engineer or technician obtaining a work permit, and it’s people like me who hire them.
Recruitment is an international market for technology companies and it is rather the case that it is too difficult to recruit from abroad. The rules are too many and the application is too rigid.
In other respects, labor immigration is also primarily about berry pickers (about a quarter of all work permits) and other seasonal workers. In a tenth of the cases, these are restaurant jobs, the only one of these industries to be included in Lena Rådström Baastad’s disparaging descriptions of what labor immigration is for anything (she mentions “fast food places”).
This should be taken into account when you write that labor immigration today is greater than asylum immigration. This is certainly true today, when asylum immigration has fallen from previously high levels. But the volumes are not coming from industries that are unfortunately, rightly or wrongly, associated with deception (the assistance industry and the construction industry have prominent roles in their description).
Labor immigration is not something that is not regulated. Each of these jobs must be preceded by a public announcement of the service for at least ten days, and the conditions of employment must be in line with the collective agreements.
Lena Rådström Baastad spreads a completely different picture with misleading claims such as “Swedish jobs are being sold to desperate people in countries with poorer wages and conditions.” A wording that seems carefully chosen to play with prejudices instead of reflecting the facts.
Lena Rådström Baastad spreads a completely different picture with misleading claims such as “Swedish jobs are being sold to desperate people in countries with poorer wages and conditions.” A wording that seems carefully chosen to play with prejudices instead of reflecting the facts.
We, who depend on external labor for the development and growth of our companies, are therefore not bad or malevolent. Recruitment is an international market for technology companies and it is rather the case that it is too difficult to recruit from abroad. The rules are too many and the application is too rigid. The stories about so-called skills expulsions affecting families that have taken root in Sweden are not only heartbreaking. It also costs jobs and development for Sweden as a country.
Because it is not the case that less labor immigration means more jobs for those of us who already live here. This is not how the economy works. On the contrary, imported labor contributes to additional jobs. According to a 2019 report by the Confederation of Swedish Companies, labor immigration contributes 34 billion SEK to Swedish GDP and 12 billion SEK in tax revenue, and then about a quarter of these values are created as a result of jobs that create the need for additional jobs.
Although the report claims that these values are created primarily in industries like the one I represent, technology companies in a broad sense, the other industries also contribute positively to employment and economic development.
Lena Rådström Baastad spends a lot of time misleading companies, and of course cheating must be fought as cheating, that is, prosecuted. There are always people who use the systems without worry. But it cannot be an argument to create new obstacles to legal labor immigration that contribute billions to GDP and public resources.
Rådström Baastad’s ideas that politics and not employers should decide what skills are needed from abroad would lead to poorer economic development and also significantly fewer jobs for Swedish citizens. It should be an obvious idea for a party defending the line of work.
