YS was granted a permanent residence permit as a refugee in May 2021 prior to entering Sweden. In 2025, YS was criminally sentenced to closed juvenile care, followed by a revocation of his international protection status and a deportation decision by the Swedish Migration Agency (SMA) with a 10-year entry ban to Sweden.

YS appealed the decision to the Migration Court in Stockholm, citing protection needs. The court overturned the decision and referred the case back to the SMA for further consideration. The court reasoned that YS did not have his application for international protection assessed during his stay in Sweden and the decision to refuse to assess the application for a residence permit on the grounds of a claimed need for international protection must therefore be annulled.

SMA appealed against the court's decision, stating that a quota refugee with a residence permit and international protection status is in a different situation than a person whose case had never been assessed and never had international protection. SMA argued that the requirement that ‘‘such an application has not previously been assessed during the foreign nationals stay in Sweden'' in Chapter 12, Section 19b(4) of the Aliens Act must be interpreted as a situation where the applicant's grounds for international protection have never been assessed before (e.g. when family ties, work permits have been invoked as grounds for a residence permit). SMA argued that the present case does not fall within the scope of this provision or else the distinction between the ordinary asylum procedure and extraordinary assessment would be undermined. Furthermore, SMA argued that the recast Asylum Procedures Directive requires at least one effective substantive procedure to assess international protection needs, which is met in the present case, as YS was granted international protection following an assessment pursuant to Chapter 4 of the Aliens Act and later had it revoked in a revocation procedure and can now present new circumstances to support his need for international protection under Chapter 12, Section 19b(1) of the Aliens Act.

The Migration Court of Appeal rejected the appeal. The court held that if a foreign national who has been ordered to be deported due to a conviction for a criminal offence invokes circumstances referred to in Chapter 12, Section 19(1) of the Aliens Act and these circumstances could not have been invoked earlier by the foreign national, or the foreign national provides a valid excuse for not having invoked the circumstances previously, SMA must consider the matter of a residence permit. The court ruled that this does not apply if the foreign national applies for a residence permit as a refugee under Chapter 4, Section 1, or as a person in need of subsidiary protection under Chapter 4, Section 2, and such an application has not previously been assessed by a final decision during the foreign national's stay in Sweden. In such a case, the application must be assessed (Chapter 12, Section 19b(4) of the Aliens Act).

The court observed that the concept of ‘stay' in Sweden has not been discussed in the preparatory work for Chapter 12 Section 19b(4) of the Aliens Act. According to the court, this absence of discussion of the concept of ‘stay' means that the legislator did not intend the scope of the provision to be different from what is apparent from its wording.

The court also noted that within the framework of a refugee quota, a foreigner can be accepted for resettlement in Sweden, and such resettlement is not based on an application procedure but is normally initiated through a request from UNHCR. Furthermore, the state is not bound by UNHCR's assessment of the foreigner's refugee status according to the Geneva Convention. According to the court, determination of refugee status is made by the individual contracting states in accordance with the respective country's procedures (Migration Court of Appeal [Migrationsöverdomstolen], Detaljer för valt avgörande - Sök rättspraxis, UM 9565-11, MIG 2013:15, 28 August 2013).

The Migration Court of Appeal concluded that the application of YS for a residence permit as a refugee or as a person in need of subsidiary protection was not assessed during his stay in Sweden. The fact that SMA had granted him international protection before entering Sweden did not mean that any assessment during his stay in Sweden has been made.

Thus, the court concluded that SMA must assess the application of YS pursuant to Chapter 12, Section 19b(4) of the Aliens Act.