No residence permit after almost half a year – missed start of semester

Efe Doğuş Selvi's classes at LU started in January. Due to delays at the Migration Agency he is however unable to attend them. Photo: Lukas J Herbers

International master student Efe Doğuş Selvi has also suffered from the late answers of the Migration Agency. Lundagård reached him in his home country Turkey at the end of the first week of the spring term – which he intended to spend in Lund.

Efe Doğuş Selvi, who is in the second year of his master at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, had no trouble getting a permit for his first year of studies. When his old permit expired in September 2015, he applied a month before the expiration date, as he had been instructed.

However, during the course of the fall term, he never received his residence card. As he spent the term in the USA for an internship as part of his master program, this was in principle not yet a problem.

“But in October I started to become suspicious that something was wrong. What if I would have needed to be in Sweden? They couldn’t know about my internship. So I started an email correspondence with the Migration Agency,” Efe Doğuş Selvi says.

In the emails, Efe Doğuş Selvi was given several reasons why his application wasn’t processed yet, one being the high number of refugees arriving in Sweden. But he wasn’t told when he would get an answer about his own application.

“It sometimes looked like the answers to the different emails were copy-pasted”, says Efe Doğuş Selvi.

After sending about six emails to the Migration Agency, Efe Doğuş Selvi wrote a last one in December 2015,  in which he said that he would take up legal actions if he would not receive his residence card. But to no avail. As of the last week of January, he still hasn’t received his residence permit and with his internship having come to an end, he is stuck in Istanbul – waiting.

Efe Doğuş Selvi has taken up contact with his department about the issue, but he was told that there was nothing they could do for him. He is very frustrated:

“I’m not angry at the people of my department, but I’m angry at the system. It’s the Migration Agency that decides, but there should be a channel between them and the University. It is ridiculous that I’m a registered LU student with a global scholarship, but at the same time I can’t use it as I can’t enter the country. The University should be able to stand up for its students and say that discrimination of this kind is unacceptable. Sweden claims to be a country in which everyone is equal, then they should also make sure that is the case.”

Efe Doğuş Selvi hopes to come to Sweden for the last term of his master as soon as possible. He is also working on filing a lawsuit to the Migration Agency.

We have tried to reach the Migration Agency to get their view of the situation. Before the deadline of this article however, they could not give a response. Keep you eye on lundagard.net for more news. 

Article; Paula Dubbink