Over 400 Sri Lanka students bound for universities in Sweden are in quandary as they have still not got the clearance to travel to Sweden, which will result in admission being denied to these students to the Autumn 2023 semester.
“This is a direct consequence of the inefficient manner in which our residence permit applications were handled by the Swedish Migration agency and also due to the heavy workload of the staff at the Swedish Embassy in New Delhi where Sri Lankans students have to go personally to obtain their visas,” said members of the newly formed ‘Let’s Love to Learn’ Sweden Sri Lanka Higher Education Appeal Effort body. These students have already paid for their university education in advance, travelled to India to get a visa and have already spent around a total of over US $ 3 billion.
They said that the same situations await students in other SAARC countries such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
“The failure of our students to join the programs on the specified date is solely due to the delay caused by the residence permit process and we are now requesting the Swedish universities to delay the enrolment dates.
“Many of our members have received correspondence from their respective university departments by now, informing them of the withdrawal of their offer of placement to the programs.”
“We are fully aware that the migration agency and the universities are two independent bodies with independent operations and procedures. However, as students we have fulfilled all the requirements, the situation is completely beyond our control.
“Since we do not have an embassy of Sweden in Sri Lanka and have had to visit India for interviews, passport verifications and biometrics submissions, the majority of our students have had to face many injustices and discrimination.
“Hence we have requested Swedish authorities to allow us to obtain us either from Dubai or Singapore via officers which have more staff to cope up with applications of this nature,” they said.