What happened
In an opinion piece in the online magazine Blankspot, Swedish-Eritrean Ephrem Gebregiorgis criticizes the new Reception Act that entered into force on 1 October 2026. Gebregiorgis points out that asylum seekers now, as a general rule, must wait at least six months before they are allowed to work, unless Migrationsverket has decided the case earlier. He also highlights that the law binds asylum seekers to state accommodation in assigned counties with attendance checks three days a week. The author urges opposition parties to demand faster access to the labor market and an open review of what the control system costs taxpayers.
Our analysis
For years, politicians from right to left have repeated the same demand: new Swedes must pull their weight, learn the language, and start working from day one. Then the same politicians pass laws that explicitly prohibit people from taking a job. It is not about law and order, but purely political signaling.
The winners are the politicians who build their power on singling out people fleeing as a passive cost. The losers are the taxpayers and the employers crying out for staff. Instead of letting people support themselves, the state builds up an expensive apparatus of punch clocks and county controls that forces forth the very benefit dependency that those in power claim to despise.
The question should never be how the state can keep people away from work. The question is what it costs Sweden when competence and the willingness to work are locked inside the waiting room of bureaucracy.
Explained
AT-UND means an exemption from the work permit requirement. It is a certificate from Migrationsverket that grants a person the right to work in Sweden during the asylum process.