Gustav and Luisa have worked hard to build a life together in Sweden with their young son, but after a surprise rejection of Luisa's permanent residency application, they tell The…

Gustav and Luisa have worked hard to build a life together in Sweden with their young son, but after a surprise rejection of Luisa's permanent residency application, they tell The Local they now fear for their family's future. Growing up in the well-to-do Stockholm suburb of Täby, Gustav Magnusson never imagined he would find himself making contingency plans in the event he felt forced out of Sweden. He himself – a lifelong Swedish citizen – is not directly at risk of being told to leave the country. Nor, currently, is his wife Luisa Fernandez, whom he met while on a cycling trip in Costa Rica in 2018. But after the Swedish Migration Agency (Migrationsverket) rejected Luisa's permanent residency application this past January and the couple sees increasingly harsh laws for foreign-born people in Sweden being enacted, they feel on uncertain ground. Luisa makes good money – more than enough, on an annual level, to satisfy the independent income requirement for permanent residency – but, as a screenwriter and script consultant, her work is freelance. Despite her having regular clients and meeting the income requirements on an annual level, Migrationsverket denied Luisa permanent residency on the grounds that her future income was not sufficiently stable. Since neither the agency nor the law specifies what counts as sufficiently stable future income and the industry in which Luisa works operates on a freelance basis, Luisa and Gustav don't see how she will, under the current rules, ever qualify for permanent residency status in Sweden. This means that, despite the fact that she has been living in Sweden for over four years, speaks fluent Swedish, is married to one Swedish citizen and is a mother to another, Luisa's status in the country is "temporary" – indefinitely. Being on temporary permits – which need to be renewed every two years and mean not being allowed to leave Sweden while waiting on renewal – leaves the family in a tricky place when it comes to planning travel back to Luisa's family in Costa Rica.