John expected his stay at at his uncle and aunt's house to be temporary while he waited to receive a permit to return. Instead, more than six months later, he remains stuck in a small village in Kent in the UK where he has not lived since he was ten, while his new wife Caroline waits desperately in their Gothenburg apartment.
"More than two thirds of my life I've lived in Sweden, and now, because of all of this, as a married man I have lived longer in England than I have lived together with my wife," John told The Local in an interview.
"In a sense I'm more Swedish than I am English," he said. Sweden is my home. I've been here for seven months now and I still feel like a tourist."
John is one of the estimated 4,000 British citizens denied post-Brexit residency as a result of Sweden's unusually strict application of the UK Withdrawal Agreement.
Unlike some refused residency status, he was fully aware that British citizens had to regularise their status by December 31st, 2021. But because he had lived in Sweden since he was ten, he believed it made more sense to apply for Swedish citizenship than for the new post-Brexit residence status.
Three months before the deadline, he applied and then largely forgot about it, believing he had done what was necessary.
He remembers a customs officer pointing out he was missing some paperwork on a trip to the UK in 2021, but the first time he truly realised how badly things were about to go wrong came two years later, in April 2023, when he flew to the UK with Caroline, who he had at that point been dating for nine months.
"I got pulled aside and taken into a room and they said, 'look you're probably not going to get back into the country unless you get things fixed'." So when he was in the UK together with Caroline, he applied for a residency permit.
It took over a year for that to be rejected. But even before that, John had already applied for a permit on the basis of his relationship with Caroline. It was only when that too was rejected in June last year – on the grounds that he already had a deportation order – that he began to panic.
Last December, more than four years after he applied and two months after he got married, his citizenship application was finally rejected – on the grounds that he has neither a permanent right of residency under EU law or permanent residency under Swedish law, and he was ordered to leave Sweden.
The Migration Court in April backed up this decision, arguing that the fact that John had lived in Sweden since he was ten years old was "irrelevant", because his permanent right of residence as an EU citizen had been "lost through the withdrawal of his home country from the union". It also said the Migration Agency's failure to inform him that he had submitted the wrong application and the four years it took to decide on citizenship were legally irrelevant as it was not the court's job to supervise the Migration Agency.
John decided to leave voluntarily. "I wanted to show that, fine, we've done all we can at the moment. I will abide by your rules. That's only fair," he said.
When he left Sweden, his application to move to Sweden on the basis of his relationship with Caroline was passed back by the Migration Court to the Migration Agency, as now he no longer had a pending deportation, the case could be heard on its own merits.
In May, to the couple's distress, the application was rejected because, as the couple could not show they had lived together for a significant period outside Sweden, they could not be exempted from the maintenance and accommodation requirements for family reunion.
"You have not cohabited for a significant period of time abroad, or in any other way shown that your relationship is well-established," the rejection letter read. "Caroline therefore does not belong to any of the groups of reference persons [sponsors] who are exempt from the requirements."
Caroline lives in a one-bedroom apartment, earns nearly 3,000 kronor a month less than the 16,211 kronor required for a spouse permit, and also relies on sick pay which the Migration Agency refused to accept as long-term income.
Seven months later, the couple are still waiting for a decision on their last appeal, after which John's lawyer warns, they will have effectively exhausted their chances.
"We haven't met since since he had to leave," said Caroline, who was also in the interview, starting to cry. "Because I have several chronic health problems and all the money that we have goes towards paying bills and then money to the attorney. It's quite painful."
"Being ripped from a loved one is absolutely horrible," John agreed.
'I fell in love with Sweden'
John was ten years old when his parents moved the family from England to Sweden in 2002, coming to join a British family friend who had married a Swedish woman and moved to the Värmland countryside. Even before they moved, he remembers visiting the school he would end up attending and dressing up as an elf to hand out chocolates at Christmas.
"We made very good friends while we were there, and mum and dad just sort of felt like Sweden was a better place for a child to grow up and like be a kid, being able to run around, not worry," John said. "I fell in love with Sweden. I made so many friends."
They settled in the small village of Nilsby, while his mother moved back and forth to England to work, often for months at a time. It was a charmed life, until his father became seriously ill when John was a teenager.
"My father passed away when I was 16. I watched him die of bowel cancer," he says. Six years later, when he was 22, his mother returned to England, but by that time he was studying, so he decided to stay, eventually moving to Karlstad.
He studied for two years to be a teacher, but stopped before he graduated as he felt it didn't suit him, since when he has largely worked as a supply teacher and at camping sites as a children's coordinator.
'Like fighting against a giant wall'
Even after living in Sweden all his life, John has found his encounter with the migration system bewildering.
"You never get to meet a judge, you never get to meet the person who's in charge of your case. They'll never see you face to face," he complained.
"It's like you're fighting against a giant wall," Caroline added. "The whole situation is just absurd. We never saw deportation as being something that might happen. It wasn't even on the map."
Both John and Caroline said their experience had changed the way they viewed their country.
"Sweden as a country is lovely. The people are lovely. The things that you can do in Sweden: amazing," John said. "What has happened with the government isn't good at all. The government has just screwed people over, denied them their rights."
Caroline was more blunt: "It's embarrassing to live in a country that treats people like trash."
In their pending appeal, their lawyer argues that the Migration Agency's deportation order failed to give sufficient weight to John's childhood spent in Sweden.
"Regarding someone who came to Sweden since birth or at a very young age, very weighty reasons are required for deportation to be considered," the lawyer wrote in the appeal. "According to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, very strong reasons are required to expel a person who has spent most of his childhood and youth in the host country."
For now, there is little the couple can do except wait, John in Kent, Caroline in Gothenburg. Their latest appeal could take several more months, a prospect Caroline said she found agonising: "We just want John to be able to come home."