'Want scientists to stay in Sweden? Don't kick them out in the first place'

Hello, and welcome to Sweden and Focus Extra, the local's weekly interview podcast. I'm Mandy Piper, a journalist with the local Sweden. For a recent article on the real-life effects of Sweden's immigration laws on families in Sweden, I spoke with Unicod and Palm and Chris Stamper, a Swedish American couple who are both biological scientists. Unicod and Chris met a decade ago when she moved to Chicago for a postdoctoral position in immunology and flu vaccine research. Chris, also a biologist, was finishing his immunology PhD at the same university. Three years later, when Unicod and was moving back to Sweden for another work opportunity, the two were a committed couple, and they made plans for Chris to follow to Sweden as soon as possible. By the summer of 2021, Chris was on his way to Sweden, with a job offer from Keralinska, Sweden's prestigious Medical Research Institute in hand. The couple had decided that Chris should come to Sweden on the basis of the job of Keralinska that he had secured, not their relationship, because the average processing times for a partner visa to Sweden, which need to be applied for and approved while the non-Swedish partner is not in Sweden, those processing times were so long and uncertain that they might have had to wait for years before they could be together again. A work permit application, however, went through in a few months. Chris worked for Keralinska for four years, doing biological science research. He and Unicod and bought an apartment and they got married. In 2025, Chris was changing jobs and the couple decided it was time for him to switch from a work permit to a permit based on ties to his Swedish wife. But to switch permit types in Sweden means having to leave the country for an undefined period of time. The couple met with an immigration lawyer who told them about a part of the law that allows for exceptions. If you have strong ties to Sweden, you can apply to be able to stay in the country while you wait on your permit application decision. With a Swedish spouse that he'd been with for nearly a decade, owning a home together in Sweden, speaking Swedish, and years of doing valuable work at one of Sweden's top research institutes, Chris and Unicod and figured that he had a good case for exemption. We joined the conversation with Chris described in what happened when the Swedish migration agency made a decision on his case. In this interview, Chris uses some Swedish words, "Voshkara" which means "researcher" or "knitning" which means "tie, connection, or attachment" and "bislut" which means "decision." In January, Migruhundsverket reached out the emailed to ask if I had left my job at Carole Lensko, and I responded that yes, I had why I was like requesting this switch. And then they send me a letter, and I think the letter took about a week to arrive, and the letter is like, to deny your exemption, you need to be out of Sweden within 14 days. And if you're not, we're going to immediately reject your application for your new residency permit. And if we do that, we also might put you on a shing and black list, that black list, you from travel into the shing and until you go to an immigration court and explain why you did this. If you have other information to share with us or want to appeal our decision for our rejection of your exemption to stay in Sweden while we decide this, you may do so. But if we disagree with your appeal, then it's an automatic rejection of the entire application. By the time the letter got to me with that information, I had seven days to decide. If I wanted to try to appeal and risk the entire application being rejected, or leave Sweden for an undefined amount of time that could be over a year, you know, potentially. You don't know, it could be two days, or it could be a very long time, you have no idea. Right. So we're both of you to hear from both of you on this, were you surprised by this? Given the current climate and change of laws, no, not surprised, but given the information that we had received from the lawyer and all the previous cases that she had worked on earlier, yes, I was surprised because if the law clearly states, if you read the actual law, it states that you may be exempt from this if you can prove that you have very strong connections to Sweden. And if being married to a sweet, owning your own home, having worked, being well integrated, speaking the language, if those are not strong connections, then what is a strong connection? I had been semi pessimistic perhaps over the whole process, but I was still quite surprised. And I think maybe not that I did have to leave, maybe the more surprising thing was I had asked an attorney. We had done that. I followed all the processes. I know it's like a standard form, but it felt very harsh to be like, also, we'll put you on a shing and black list. So you like are blacklisted until you go before a judge, not entirely sure why asking to just stay in Sweden while they decide my other permit should have a blacklisted from the entirety of like the European Union or the shing and zone, and then it seems very strange to me that if you appeal their decision around the exemption and they disagree with that, it then becomes a rejection of the entire application because that functionally makes it the cost like benefit is that no one's going to appeal. It's not, it's not really, it wasn't really a decision or like a choice. Yeah. So what do you do? Like the choice to appeal is not really a risk you want to take at that point. I mean, I guess I'm just very, like for someone in this situation, I still think I was overall like probably better off or luckier than many people might be because I like could go home. I guess I decided I wouldn't appeal, it wasn't worth the risks, but I do like have family, I can stay with in the United States and the type of job I do since it's remote mostly, I could keep doing my work and I was working with companies in UK at the time and they were very understanding, was the time zone change. So it's like I could keep doing that, I could like stay with my parents, I had enough money to buy a last minute plane ticket or whatever, but then it's still like stressful and then it all got complicated because I had to let them know I was leaving and inform them when if it was by the deadline and it's in proof that I bought this plane ticket. And then that's when this huge winter storm hit the Eastern United States. So it canceled my flight, but I had already like, I think we got that, I got that flight cancellation like 11 PM or something at night, but I already said I was leaving Sweden the next day. So I ended up buying like a plane ticket that night to London for the next day and just flew to London since it's out of the EU and they said, okay, that's fine. In New York, it's like that's fine if you just go to London for now, that's still outside, but you need to improve a passport stamp, the picture of a stamp in your passport that you've left the European Union. And then I got to Arlanda and when I went through border control, I explained that and she said, no, I can't give you a passport stamp because your first good residency permit is still active in the system. I haven't deactivated it. And it is against European Union like law and regulation for us to give passport stamps to people with valid residency permits and I was like, well, they're going to retract it and she's like, I'm so sorry, I cannot give you a passport stamp. But you can just buy a newspaper and hold your passport in front of it in front of like a famous British line mark in London and send that to a woman, it should be fine. So I won't make you a passport stamp. I was like, okay, if you're sure and she's like, well, I'm really sorry, but I cannot until the like this residency permits active. And so I can't stamp your passport. But that's what me group and Ferret had said they wanted to see from me. And I was working also with a fellowship in Cambridge, the United Kingdom at the time that I was just about to start. So I just decided, oh, actually, I can just go be there in person for the first two weeks. I was like helping manage some of the research projects. So I flew to London, got a hotel room last minute and had a King's Cross train station that night. It was like 10 p.m. on a Saturday, bought a British newspaper and then held it with my passport in front of platform nine and three quarters. And sent this to me, her own spare kid. And they accepted it. They're like, okay, thanks. This is proof that you've left Sweden, but that was my proof photo. And then, yeah, I was like, I will 10 p.m. that night and I just like panic, booked an Airbnb in Cambridge for a week and I spent a week in Cambridge with this fellowship. And then the next week in London and then I flew to the United States after two weeks in the United Kingdom. Okay. At this point, both you and Anna Cotted and neither of you have any idea when you're going to see each other again. Yeah. I flew to London that first weekend because you left my weekend in Cambridge. Yeah. You left Sweden on Saturday and then the next weekend I flew to London to just hang out because it was better than being miserable in different countries. Yeah. So it's been a weekend in London. And then again. So we're lucky in the sense that we can do this. Like we have the money to do that, but it's still not like fun, right? It's just the stress of not knowing, I think it's worse than anything because if you know that, okay, Chris is going to have to be outside of Sweden for six months, even a year, even longer. If you know that, you can plan for it and you can say, okay, well, like we'll see each other then and you can make however it's still not fun but it's better than not knowing. - Who unto you then, Chris? How were you affected psychologically and emotionally at this stage? - Yeah, it's the same. It's like very stressful to not know. It made like planning things hard. I also, it's like overall the four years I'd been in Sweden before this point, like anywhere. It's gonna have like really good days, really bad days. And it's like, you know, there's maybe certain things about Swedish academia and health Swedish universities run into scientific research compared to American ones that like some might be better, some might be worse. And there were like times I'd put up with things that I, in my four years that I was here that was like, I don't agree, this is the best way to do this. Or it feels like, you know, there's a very unfair tilting against every non-Swedish person and Swedish academia when you have post-docs from like 50 countries and faculty from one in your department. So I think I like, I got more negative feelings on that. And I was like, okay, but I've done all this for four years. I've like contributed to Sweden. I've like been a Swedish, I had like funding that I had sent back. But, you know, I had gotten competitive grant funding for my research on autoimmune disease and stuff in Sweden from the Swedish Medical Society or like Swedish society for medical research. I felt like I'd done a lot of things right here. And then to like have a last minute letter, this like actually you need to leave our country because you don't meet the girls for this exemption. If you don't leave, we might just blacklist you from a bunch of other countries. It felt a bit like a betrayal or something. I don't know, it almost felt like, and I'm like, okay, clearly they don't want me there. So like, do I want to live there long term or not. The immigration and stuff can be complicated all the time. And in the years I had been here and like several, on the cards relatives or friends, we'll be like, well, but I saw this newspaper report that a lot of scientists who come here for peace, use your post-docs leave wire. So when you like scientists, they've been Sweden and how can we get people like you to stay? And then I'm like, well, it turns out we don't kick them out in the first place. Maybe. So it was like very stressful. And yeah, it got easier, I mean, not easy necessarily, but it got a little easier over time. I guess luckily, when you can say it was lucky, this fellowship was starting. I was like helping run. So I threw myself into that. I had like a ton of other research projects going on. So I just like did a bunch of things to distract myself, I suppose. I was two weeks in the United Kingdom and then I went to Kentucky with my parents from Lexington. Yeah, I'm from Virginia, but my parents now live in a little town called Georgetown, which is really close to Lexington, in the middle of a bunch of like very pretty coarse farms. So that was at least nice. It was a very pretty place to be. - Yeah, exiled, yeah. - Yeah, exactly exiled as when I kept, it was like my joke with all my friends, that I was exiled or things of that nature. And then I was there only, I think two or three weeks. So the decision was pretty quick. When I had an email from the home saying I made a decision in my case and I logged into the portal, it's that I had been granted a two year residency permit for both working and living in Sweden. So I think I called on the car and we were both very happy. And then like, I had to like book, you know, change flights or book new flights that had already been like a thing, especially with the winter storm and all that, like I think I know booking a ton of flights I never used in the whole process. So I ultimately was out of Sweden for I think like five weeks roughly. - So there was obviously quite a financial cost to this as well as a psychological and emotional cost to the uncertainty and separation and so on here. Yeah, do you have any vague sense of how much money you lost in this? - I would say it's an around range of like seven to $10,000 all told probably. - And so now I assume you're, you know, about six or five months into a year, your first two year permit officially as the spouse of Anacodin, is that, is that right? - I think so. - Yeah, approximately. - So I say, you know. - You're on your first two year permit in any case. - Yes, exactly, about four or five months into it. Exactly as a spouse. But what I say, I think so. I think it is as a spouse. Clearly this is what the letter from Meagurons Faircutte said. But the first time I tried to come home to Sweden, I had got stuck at the border for a very long time while they had to call Meagurons Faircutte because they were very confused. And they didn't tell me many details and they didn't care that I had the letter or anything with me that they said it had to all be on their system from scanning my stuff. But I could hear them speaking to each other in Swedish. And I guess what had happened is Meagurons Record didn't seemingly retract my research permit until the same day they gave me my spouse will permit. And then they also, at the time the lawyer had said because of my connections and everything. And because I'd been in Sweden for so many years, I should also request permanent residency when I asked for the spouse will permit. And they denied that. So they denied the permanent residency and they retracted the researcher permit on the exact same day they granted the two-year temporary permit. And I guess like for the Gran's police and the border police on their screen, she could just see like permanent rewarded with this number, permanent residency denied, permanent retracted. And it was like a very confusing situation for them. So they kept making me go set off to the side while they were trying to call like talk to a supervisor, who talked to a supervisor, then they had me come back up. And they were like, you apply for permanent residency, it was denied. I was like, yes, but I was given a two-year resident. Two-year resident's permit, like on grounds of my spouse being Swedish. And they're like, okay, go stay back down. And I had to sit there. I don't know how long it was. - And this was about 10 more minutes. - Oh, this was at Arlanda. And they called me Ruhun's Barca. And eventually they like had me come up and she said, okay, they denied your permanent residency, which I knew. But you don't have a spouse will permit. You just have a work permit for two years. And the letter, like the letter from your husband calls it a spouse will permit. But she was like the person I talked to there said, you do have a two-year work permit. So I can let you in. But it's not a spouse will permit. It's a work permit for two years. So you can, it's like, you're all good. You can go in now. Sorry, about like the long way. It was like 45 minutes an hour or something. - Well, they just tried to figure out what was going on. And they told you something that seems to be wrong information, but given everything, it just leaves you feeling again a bit uncertain, is that right? - Yeah, exactly. Because I could hear like the word, call it like recall, recall, and then the second, then I traveled, I think it was, we went to Paris and then I went to the UK for work again. Maybe just a little bit after that. And then the second time I also came back home to Sweden, the same thing happened in the border. They were very confused by how everything was doing. - By the way, you had your physical. - I did have the physical card then, but he still was like, I need to talk to my supervisor. So it wasn't as long, and I don't think they called me Irwin Spirquet that time, but it still took like a lot of time. And it's always like very stressful because it's like, I don't know if they call somebody in there, no, actually don't let him in. But since then, I've been in and out a few times and I haven't had any problems. That's never come back up apart from the first two times. So I don't know if something got changed from the computer system or clarified, or if it's just I've come in and out so many times, they are like, well, other people have let him in. So I feel more comfortable just doing this now. Like I have no idea. - Okay, and can you maybe explain to someone who might not understand not being in any kind of situation like this, why even like a 45 or hour long wait where you're not sure whether you're going to be let back in the country can feel so stressful and can feel so much like longer than just 45 minutes or an hour. - It feels very stressful because it's again, like I don't think I've done anything wrong throughout the whole process, but that first time it really again, like the questioning and the constant like sit over there off to the side just, it feels like you're being treated a bit like you've done something wrong or like you're trying to do some criminal activity. And then it gets very stressful because if they do say actually no, you're not welcome in, well yeah, maybe legally you are and you're gonna have to have that fight ahead of you. But like in that moment, you can't do it then. Like if they say no, it's no and then you're like, gonna be held in some form of detention until you're sent back to like wherever you've departed from and then once you get back on the car and's already in Sweden, I'm gonna have to figure that out like, how do I fight this? How do I argue like how long is this gonna take now and what are the steps gonna be here? So it's like a very stressful, it was a very stressful like 45 minutes or an hour of like, I don't even know what I'm gonna do if they're like actually no, you can't come in. - Because you have no control or power and that's a choice and as you say, even if they're wrong, yeah, legally, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, you're just like at the whims of fate and other people at that time. - And why did they deny your permanent residency? I assume there was some information in the dispute. - So I have read this letter so many times, I understand the words one by one, I do still do not understand exactly what they mean and I consider myself quite like I'm highly educated and pretty good with reading Swedish, but no, I cannot understand it. I think what happens is that there's like a glitch somewhere that they can only award or you can only apply for a permanent residency when you apply for an extension of a current or you can only apply for it when you don't currently have a permit. But since Chris was on a permit that was supposed to be retracted, he already was on a permit that wasn't going to be extended, so then he could not apply for the, they couldn't try his application for a permanent residency because he was already on a different permit that wasn't going to be extended. Yeah, but that one was, it has to be like an extended, like you applied for permanent applying for renewal, but since I technically wasn't renewing, I was switching from for sure to unkidding. Yeah, but it's that, but it was also that they would not even try his case. And so it was the permit from Catalina Skull, which should have been out of the system. Yes, but just wasn't, it wasn't. So I think it maybe wouldn't have been granted anyway because it wasn't a permit that was to be extended at that point. But it was also something about that they could, they would not even try his case on that. It wouldn't even look at it. No, so they were just like, no, we're not, we're not even going to look at this. Okay, so now at this stage, how, how are you thinking about your future together in terms of status in Sweden, what do you foresee for any struggles that lie ahead? Do you feel like maybe it do feels safe now in Sweden? Do you not? If you don't, are you guys considering moving to your home country, Chris, to the United States? Talk to me, both of you where you're out with that. I mean, safe, I guess, a bit now, I feel a little more secure until two years from now when maybe it all happens again, or I can't get permanent and like the citizenship thing has gotten longer and longer fine anyway there. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's another part of this case. I am married to a Swedish citizen and under the old laws, which are no longer an effect. It was three years you could apply for citizenship, but you can't apply for citizenship until you have permanent residency and you can apply for permanent residency on a force for a permit to have been here for four years. There's like always a reason I want to move back home and don't want to move back home, but I have applied to jobs in the United States and it was interviewing with like some companies in the US and so on, like the big AI frontier labs there and stuff and I stink now, I would be much more open to like taking one of those offers if I got one and moving back to the United States. And you say more open process? Oh, yeah, you say after this experience? Yeah, yeah, after this experience, I would be like more, I feel less of a desire necessarily or not like, I guess I feel less of a desire to stay in Sweden potentially. I'm not like opposed to it, it's not like I definitely want to leave Sweden, but there's like a part of me that's just like okay, but like it felt like I was very much maybe not wanted or sure it's all technicalities, but it's like bad messy technicalities and so there is some part of me that's like, yeah, I'd be happy to leave Sweden and go do like this stuff I do somewhere else. Okay. And how about you on a card and? So I would be lying if I said I don't want to stay like I do on the themes, but this whole experience, I felt like a rug was being pulled from under my feet and I felt betrayed by my country and I lost faith in like every institution in the country. I feel like nothing's working. I feel like the one government agency doesn't know what the other one does and I can't trust anything and they don't really, it felt like they don't want my husband here. So they don't want my husband here. I'm not going to want to be here either. So I'm much less opposed to leaving now than I was before this. So if Chris does get a job overseas, I will be at some point moving after I have once all the immigration bullshit. If you pardon my French, it's solved that way because it's not easy anywhere. No. No, I know. Obviously. And I will say that I would be, I would prefer to move back to the United States where I have lived then to go to another country where we both would be immigrants. Right. Yeah. And yeah, of course on a cotton for you, there's a different kind of rupture, I assume, since it is your country, your Swedish shiver who up here, presumably growing up here, you did not, and coming of age here, you did not have the sense that Swedish institutions would behave like this, is it? No, not at all. Not at all. Like it's definitely, I mean, there was one Chris first moved here, I kept defending things that didn't work. I kept saying this is not how it's supposed to be or this is not how it used to be or this is not what I knew it to be, but I at some point during the four years before this whole thing happened, I kind of did that less and less, now I've stopped defending things entirely. I can't defend things anymore because it's clearly very, very, very, very different than it used to be. I know I didn't have to deal with immigration before, that's true, that's one thing, but if you like a lot of other things, don't necessarily work as well as they used to. There's an election coming up in September and at the local, you know, we are audiences largely people who can't vote or have rather recently gained the right to vote. When I caught him, you are presumably citizen, so you'll be able to vote. Chris, you've been here for a few years, so probably you can vote locally regionally. I think now, yeah, because I'm not you, but I should be now able to vote the local ones, yeah. Yeah, but you won't be able to vote for the national government, which is of course the one that affects your lives most profoundly. So a question that I'd like both of you to answer is a twofold. One, do you feel like the average Swedish voter is aware of how this affects migration law, affects Swedish citizens who have foreign spouses, no, and okay, so let's just start there. So you're not aware of how so talk to me about that every time I talk to anybody about our situation, everybody, like without exception, they're shocked. They don't really say much, except that that can't be right or surely, but surely they won't do this. So, but surely they don't mean that it's like there's no but surely. There's only these like this framework and that's where we have to fit into and it can be things as simple as one of the things that you mentioned in the post that like we get, we do get split up into different lines at the border unless I go with Chris because it tests all passports, so I can go in that line, but sometimes they get annoyed when I come up there with my Swedish passport and they say, why are you in this line? I'll say because my husband's here. It's very quick and it's a minor thing, but now I just flew back to Sweden, oh, like last week and that was terminal two, I think we came in. Yeah, so it's a small and border guard there. Control, yeah, we were come back, we were visiting my family in the US, but now it was like very long, slow line because I think they had one all passports or they had two lines, but one was like, you can come this way if you've pre-registered on the app because it makes it quicker and I guess the EU now or some EU countries have this app you can use and you take your picture and do some other stuff. The app doesn't let you do that if you have a residency permit because people on residency permits aren't photographed and don't have their fingerprints taken. So you can't use the app and you also can't use the EU citizen line because residency permits don't go through that line even though the all passport lines don't do the fingerprinting and stuff. So now it's actually your stuck in the slowest line if you have a residency permit. Have you also encountered people being surprised? You said you speak Swedish. You know, you've been here a while like when you said that are people just assumed that things are easier for you because you're married to a Sweden and have been here for a while. I think so. Yeah, I mean, I think that I've been here a while then I'm here to a Sweden that like I'm a scientist like I've had people say to me which I find somewhat distasteful but I've had to be like oh but you're like the type of immigrant we want in Sweden. So of course it's like these these new policies they're not for you like they don't mean you and like well they are for everybody and or they're like but surely you'll be granted the exemption. So you don't need to worry about it. No one I wasn't they're like well surely it'll be like a week and it was fairly fast at the end of the day. Like I was quite lucky in that regard but I so I think a lot of people like it's just they're always convinced it's like yeah I mean I don't know not to get like super political by remembering the United States when all the fight was going on with Ruby Wade there's the article the only moral abortion is my abortion is like the the cases people know and their family or friends they're always just convinced that some exemption to the rule like no he is going to have like the easy time as an immigrant it's like these things these policies they're not like for him they're for like these people I don't know who are the bad kind or whatever like their thoughts may be which again I'm not agree with and anyway but so I think it's a bit of fighting that where it's like well no it's like when you ask me why so many postdocs leave Sweden or why I like so many foreign scientists want to go back to their other their home countries or other EU countries it's like because these policies hit everybody yeah and when you say well you know You see, this comment that comes up that you personally find is tasteful, that you, well, it's not you there after with these strict laws, you get, you know, which, as, you know, I've gotten as well, are you, do you have some sense that there is like this, this certain image of an immigrant that people have in mind, then in this case, even though it is undefined? Yeah, right. I mean, I'm going to assume they are generally thinking more refugees, immigrants from the Middle East, immigrants from Northern Africa, immigrants who are probably like potentially like practicing Muslims, right? Maybe not highly educated. I mean, it depends on like, I don't want to, this is like not many sweets, but there's definitely been sweets here, like, oh, but it's like easier for you to integrate with like ethnic sweets and it's like, mmm, not a, it's like, oh, but you're Western, so like, you know, your cultural, your values are a bit more aligned. And then I'm like, I don't know if you've seen US values. I don't know if they're very aligned with anyone to be honest. As a Canadian, no comments here. Yeah. I'm fully, I'm fully calling some of the US and all those problems, so I don't take offense there. So I think, yeah, it's probably some more targeted, like, a more in that sense, like that type of immigrant. For some people, I've heard this from. And then others, I think maybe there's don't think about immigration that much at all. And it's just like, yeah, some immigrants have problems, but surely like you who's married to a sweet and speak Swedish and like have a PhD, it's not you who is going to have problems. So I think there is not even like, maybe this super negative is just that one time they've thought a lot about immigration. They're like, oh, but Chris is like, the immigrant I know, but he's like going to have no problems because it's really going to be easy for someone like him. I think, I think sometimes I think people don't even think about Chris as an immigrant. Yeah, maybe. Like family friends, whatever it's like, oh, but he's married to me, but that's like their family. And don't even consider the fact that there's immigration involved. Right. So when they hear the, you know, political debates or the rhetoric or discourse around migration in Sweden, they don't think of Chris and you on a card and I think maybe now, I think maybe after this whole like being kicked out and make all of that, I think maybe, but I don't think before them. So I'm like, okay, so all right, then with the an election coming up and with this, you know, a lot of the average Swedish voter not being aware of how these laws actually affect people's lives. I like does each of you, if you could say something to the average Swedish voter, if you could about how migration laws or migration discourse affects people like your family, what, what would you want to say to them? This is like maybe more philosophical. I think being American for the goods and bad that has one thing that many Americans of all political like stripes and spectrums are predisposed to do is be very critical of their country and government. Maybe not certain groups, but overall, I have always felt there's much more like openness and predisposition to be critical of one's country and government under the belief that that's like a good thing because that's how you make it better. And I get to sense in Scandinavia or at least in Sweden, there is like such a high trust in systems and government and historically, I get to sense like I think the login applies on an individual level on a national level. I often feel it really doesn't that there's like a strong resistance to insult or criticize things that are Swedish or to believe that like they could be improved or that maybe there is something that's like wrong or worse than other countries do it. And so I don't know my advice would be maybe like keep an open mind that there are things that like governments can make mistakes and Sweden's not exempt or like no country special in that regard. Like you can do things wrong or poorly and they can be improved and like it's not maybe the worst thing in the world to sometimes be a little self-critical on a national level and be like is this the right thing to do or is this the best for us and like should this be improved or could this be undying or redying or I don't know. Like in some sense be a little more open to being critical perhaps on a cotton. I think that's a really really hard question. I don't know that I have a very good answer but I think people need to stop and think and realize that it's not going to be a quick this is a scapegoat going after like you all people always want a scapegoat and right now I mean I guess immigrants have it's a very easy target and it's not the first time in history. It's probably certainly not going to be the last time but being extra hard on on immigration is not going to fix all the problems that this country has currently. And I think that goes also back to what Chris is saying. It's like there are many things that do not work right now and that maybe have never really worked. I don't know certainly it wasn't perfect when I was growing up but I feel like it's gone worse and I feel like the country that I left in 2016 was very different from the country I came back to three years later. It went very fast. You've just been listening to on a cotton palm and Chris Stamper in conversation with me, Mandy Piper. Thank you as always for supporting the local. Our producer on this episode was Paula Mahoney and we'll be back on the weekend with a roundup of the latest news and talking points from Sweden. Sweden in focus is a podcast by the local Europe. The publisher is James Savage. That's all for this week's free edition of Sweden in focus. If you'd like to hear a full length version of the podcast each week as well as an additional midweek episode with more interviews and analysis, please upgrade to membership plus. Make sure to check the episode notes for details on how to upgrade. Our sound engineer is Reese Edwards. The publisher is James Savage.