In 2017 a new word entered the Swedish vernacular, alongside fejkade nyheter (fake news), kombucha and #metoo. It was kompetensutvisning - literally "expulsion of a person who has skills required in the labour market". Or, more briefly, "talent expulsions". As a matter of policy and law, Sweden is deporting hundreds of badly needed foreign professionals, some of whom have built lives and families over many years. The Swedish Migration Agency is going through working migrants' histories and picking the smallest oversights or discrepancies, such as missing health insurance payments, which it uses to try to get rid of them. And Australians are getting caught up in the purge, causing stress and even illness - putting lives on hold.

Loading According to a new survey by campaigning group Diversify, whose results were published last month, four in five of those surveyed and caught up in this process say it is affecting their health or the health of family members. One cited: "Depression. Social isolation. Fear. Doubt. Anxiety. Loss of sleep. Caused sick days from work, poor performance at work. Caused a break-up with my partner." Said another: "My family and I feel stressed, uncertain and a feeling of loss. I cannot focus on my job and daily life." Meanwhile, Sweden's Chamber of Commerce has complained in a new report that Sweden has a skills crisis that has become a "competence crisis", urging that not only must kompetensutvisningar end, but the Migration Agency has shown such incompetence that "we want someone else to be responsible".

McDonald, a computer programmer, moved to Stockholm in 2016 and, by 2017, was described by a local tech podcast as "emblematic of the new breed of developer that the IT industry is calling out for". She also met a local guy. And, in February, they had a daughter. But it was not an easy pregnancy - hyperemesis gravidarum or excessive nausea had her in hospital several times. And then the letter arrived, at the 28-week mark. "It just made everything 10 times worse," she said. "A few weeks later the baby moved and my legs weren't working properly. It was all very stressful for me - and my partner and unborn fetus." The most frustrating fact was that McDonald was actually one of the lucky ones. Or so she thought.

McDonald had had an inkling there would be trouble - her small IT start-up employer at the time had been slow on the work visa paperwork, not helped by the Migration Agency's clogged phone lines and glacial processes. So, inspired by the Australian Parliament's citizenship crisis, she'd dug into her family history and discovered she was eligible for Cyprus citizenship. She applied for it, was approved, and the certificate was in the mail. She'd told the Swedish authorities all this. She had a Swedish partner and a Swedish daughter on the way, an employer desperate to keep her, and now she was also an EU citizen. Nevertheless, the letter came ordering her to leave. She has appealed and, on March 1, her lawyer told her she had been successful. But it has been a stressful and frustrating time. "It is super crazy," she says. "I have friends at work [who are immigrants]; they're constantly scared that any day this could happen to them. I don't have any trust in the system any more. "I want to stay here, I want to stay with my family. We have everything set up. I'm just disappointed.

Loading "If another programmer asked me what it's like to work in Sweden I'd say 'Well it's not going to be easy' … you have to suspect it's not going to work out. You shouldn't get comfortable, you should always feel like you're not welcome." The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald reported the case of Steve Moloney, an Australian coffee entrepreneur and award-winning barista, told to leave Sweden because of Migration Agency delays in renewing his work visa. The Diversify survey reported that 1 per cent of respondents were Australian, meaning five or six of those who responded to the call-out for respondents over social media and professional networks. According to official figures, the Swedish Migration Agency had a backlog of more than 10,169 work permit applications as of the end of January. The backlog is growing: in January it received 4494 work permit applications but made only 3838 decisions.

Diversify chief operations officer Matt Kriteman, himself a US immigrant, said Sweden had adopted an open, liberal labour migration model in 2008, but after a change in government in 2014 it started to tighten immigration requirements. Migrant children from Syria sleep outside the Swedish Migration Agency's offices, in Marsta, Sweden, in 2016. Sweden has since clamped down on what were some of the world's most open migration policies. Credit:AP Measures introduced at the time of the huge 2015 refugee influx, when Sweden absorbed more asylum seekers per capita than any other country in the EU, were designed to protect the mistreatment of low-qualified labour but had ultimately led to kompetensutvisning. The issue was polarised along with the general migration debate during an intense election year in 2018. "In many ways this is part of a learning process for Sweden to deal with non-EU workers," Kriteman said.