from Probationary PR to PUT

Congratulations, you've got your PR status, and have arrived in Sweden, ready to start your new life in this strange new world of wonderful summers and frigid and overly long winter months. Be sure to get your personnummer from Skatterverket ASAP. Bring all legal documents, such as marriage certs etc and you'll get one in a jiffy.

Aside 1: Our marriage cert issued by ROMM not ROM. Although the lady at the counter could clearly understand English, she was looking for a certain logo on our cert to be reflected on the ROMM homepage in order to verify our claim. It was a near miss - I spotted the logo she was referring to, very small, somewhere on the receipt of the marriage booking (which was incidentally made and paid online!). So to be safe, bring everything with you! 

Aside 2: Think about what name you want to use. The Swedish system has problems with us folks with patronymic names, that means you Salim bin Salim, and you, Devi d/o Rajesh Kumar. My DH has always had a surname, I did not. So what they did was they made "bte, Abdul X"  my middle name and "Abdul X" my unmarried surname, which was then easily changed to Myname Abdul X Myhusbandssurname. 
My suggestion to use Marlina AbdulWahabsdotter was quite summarily dismissed - despite it being a very good reflection of medieval Nordic surname conventions. Unfortunately though, this results in my dad's name being part of a dual-surname surname... and my dad does not have a short name. Sigh. This name will haunt you - from every class you sign up for, to every subsequent package you collect from the nearest postombud from now until forever. 

As all SG-passport holders know, it has to be renewed every 5 years. This isn't much of an issue if you stay in SG and don't travel, then you can just renew it just before you go off on holiday. But it is vital for you as an overseas resident to ensure that your passport is up-to-date, because your PR pass is in your passport, and it's only valid as long as your passport is. Sure you can just go around with your bank-issued leg (legitimation). But if anyone asks to see your passport, and it's expired well... Jimmy or, more likely, one of his cronies will kick you out with glee, I should imagine...

Because we had an established relationship (again, this also applies if you're not legally married to your mate), my probationary PR status lasts for 3 years. If they're not sure, this is 5 years. Before the date on your PR pass runs out, you will be sent a letter to remind you and your partner to present yourselves to the local Migrationsverket office. This is not a quick process. Take the day off work and reschedule your dentist appointment. Even if you're given a time, Migrationsverket is so crowded that you may be seen an hour after your given appointment time - just like the vet's office. And then the whole interview can take anything from 20 mins to an hour. Plus 10 minutes more before you get your passport back. Plus, no one in Sweden takes air-conditioning seriously in the summer, and that goes for MV as well.

By this time, ideally you'd have been learning to speak Swedish for 3 years (eller man borde ha gjort det!). Brush up on your Swedish prior to the interview. The interviewer I had could obviously speak English, but they can prolong your interview or make you work for it harder if you can't manage to hold a conversation in Swedish. This interview is much less cosy and much less intimate compared to the one at the SG embassy. For one thing, there were several standing booths, all in simulateneous operation - just like the old POSB tellers and safety perspex/glass. And for another, there were CROWDS of people from all over the world in a waiting room that's probably meant for half the amount that do show up. Take a queue ticket.

This briefer interview is just to make sure that your r'ship is real and still intact.First they talk to both of you, then individual interviews are made. DH was first, me second. I was asked the address of my DH's workplace - which I didn't know, at the time. I told the interviewer that I knew how to get there, I just didn't know the address. He looked really worried at first when I told him I didn't know, but relaxed visibly as soon as I told him where it was... next he asked what my future plans were... he was a nice, cheerful fellow. I could hear a Thai woman and her interviewer, both sides speaking quite loudly, a couple of booths down from me...  I've heard that they ask really silly questions like your partner's favourite foods and so on, but I didn't get questions like that...

Anyway, so after the interview, he took a (very unglam! as one would say in sg)picture of me, and issued my Permanent Uppenhålltillstånd. Hurrah.

A couple of years later, my passport ran out of validity, and I had to get a new one done via the embassy in Denmark. I took both the cancelled passport and the new one down to Migrationsverket, and they issued an updated PUT without a fuss. There was a bit of a queue though, but it's nice to be able to drop-in without an appointment.

Remember, if you're not a legitimate couple, you may have to wait 5 years before getting PUT. And if they figure you're faking it, they might not give you a PUT, which means you'll be shoved out of Sweden in a hurry.

A little later down the road, you have to consider things like: Do I want Swedish citizenship? and perhaps more problematic than that: Should I give up my SG citizenship? Because, at present, SG does not allow dual-citizenship. (Suspenseful music cue.)