Bound by country, devoted to family

Newlyweds are seldom thinking about paperwork when starting their lives together following the festivities of a wedding. But for Danes married to citizens outside the EU, binders of paperwork, receipts and tangible proof of your love for each other is necessary. 

The process of family reunification in Denmark requires patience, time and money. Six families who have gone through this process share their experiences navigating the system and fighting for their right to live with their family in Denmark.

Udlændingestyrelsen was contacted for general comment on this story. They did not respond to the request in time.

When snow first dusted the streets of Copenhagen this winter, six-year-old Jaala was bundled up to join her first snowball fight. For Jaala, it was the wonder of seeing snow for the first time. For her parents, it marked the end of a year navigating the process of coming to Denmark.

Jessica lived in Denmark from ages six to ten. After her parents separated, her mother, who had full custody, moved back to Australia, followed by her Danish father. Jessica spoke Danish at home with her dad but went to high school in Australia. She met Richie at university, and a few years later, they had Jaala.

When the first snow this winter dusted the streets of Copenhagen, six-year-old Jaala was bundled up to join her first snowball fight. For Jaala, it was the wonder of seeing snow for the first time. For her parents, it marked the end of a year navigating the process of coming to Denmark.

Now that Jaala’s six, her parents wanted her to experience Denmark, learn the language and stay connected to her Danish culture. But moving back proved harder than expected.

In April 2024, they submitted their first family reunification application, with Jessica as the sponsor so Richie and Jaala could move to Denmark. The application was rejected. Jessica could not prove her Danish fluency since she had attended high school in Australia, did not work in Danish, and was not currently living in Denmark. The only way to demonstrate fluency would have been to take an in-person exam, offered only twice a year, requiring a 27-hour flight.

“What really frustrated me was that I’m trying to help Denmark in so many ways,” Jessica said. “I’d like to strengthen my culture, my language, I’d like to pass that on to my child, I want my child to grow up knowing her Danish. But we also want to be organized. I want to come to Denmark and be prepared.”

With their booked flights approaching, their only option was to come to Denmark and reapply for the family reunification with Jaala as Richie’s sponsor once in the country.

“We had to give up our jobs, sell our car, rent our house. We put a lot on the line for this,” Jessica said.

When Sophia chose to spend her life with her Kurdish husband, she knew it meant leaving Denmark. In fact, it wouldn’t even be possible for them to apply for family reunification.

“I knew the rules from the beginning of the relationship, so it didn't come as a shock,” Sophia said.

They met in 2018, when he was living in an asylum center and Sophia was volunteering at a community center he visited. He had already been rejected from the asylum process and was living at Kærshovedgård, a departure center for rejected applicants. As their relationship got more serious over a year, he moved in with her, a natural step in the relationship but one that risked a prison sentence for him.

Rejected asylum seekers are required to stay at departure centers where they must follow strict rules including staying at the center each night and accounting for their whereabouts with the police. Breaking these rules results in a prison sentence and eventually a six-year entry ban to Denmark. The rejected asylum seekers can come and go during the day, but generally the conditions at Kærshovedgård were uncomfortable and often unsafe, as has been reported in inspection visits made by the Parliamentary Ombudsman.

So, he went underground, living with Sophia, and building a life together. When they decided to get married, they started taking steps to move outside the country. It wasn’t possible to apply for marriage or family reunification in Denmark. Even if he had followed all the rules, it's required to have visited Denmark on a legal stay to be granted family reunification, but he had been living in Denmark as an asylum seeker. Though in his case it wouldn't have worked out since his name would turn up in the system from leaving the center and he could be deported from Denmark.

So, they got married in Sweden and then moved to Germany where he was granted a residence permit, started studying and they both found jobs.

“Should I really make a decision to not to be with somebody because the government tells me I'm not allowed to be with them? It's a bit messed up.” Sophia said. “They should not make this decision for me.”

They now live in Flensburg, Germany, near the Danish border, with their two toddlers. After nearly six years in Germany, her husband recently applied for German citizenship, which if approved will give the family the option to return to Denmark in the future with more security.

Sophia is not her real name. She requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the information in her case.

Henry and Anne started looking for a path back to Denmark after getting married in July last year. They met while studying in London, and dated for about four years getting closer while living together in a tiny flat during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020.

Anne, who is Danish, saw how expensive it would be to bring her British husband to Denmark under the Danish family reunification requirements. Leading up to their vows, when they weren’t wedding planning, they were applying for jobs for Henry in Denmark and other EU countries hoping Henry could get a work visa. They ended up moving to Austria where Henry was offered a job as a biology teacher.

They planned to stay in Austria for a couple years, but their timeline moved up when Anne got pregnant.

All in one hectic week last June, their daughter was born, they found an apartment in Denmark, Henry accepted a position as a teacher in a school in Denmark and they applied for Henry’s residence permit on EU family reunification grounds.

“When I was in the hospital almost giving birth, I was looking for flats for us to move to Denmark and getting my mom to go and look at them for us,” Anne said.

They moved to Denmark in August trusting the three-month processing time they had been told, and Henry hoped start teaching just a couple weeks after the start of the school year. But weeks stretched into months when the authorities continued to ask for further documentation that Anne had truly been living in Austria.

“If they had any doubt I was living in Denmark, they would know that because my CPR number was inactive, you can see in the Danish system that I’m not living in Denmark, then where would you think I would be?”

Anne wasn’t working in Austria after quitting a stressful job and navigating the death of her father, but they thought it should be enough to send in the documents listed in the requirements; scans of grocery store receipts, gym memberships, the bill from the hospital when she gave birth to her daughter, and her permit from Austria for extended residence in the country. Finally, the third time they were asked for additional documents, after a month of Anne calling every day and Henry’s employer directly contacting the agency they finally got the acceptance letter for Henry’s residence permit—about two months delayed.

“The thing that really got me is that I was in a position where I was able to tell the immigration system that I wanted to come into Denmark in a career that I have experience in that requires further education to do,” Henry said. “I’ve got a job offer already lined up, I’ve got a property already lined up. I have a wife from that country who’s a citizen and I have a baby who is also a citizen of that country. So, I felt like I was putting the best case possible forward. I don’t know what I could have done to make myself a more attractive and easy option for them.”

Because of all the delays and the fact that Henry had leave his job early in Austria and lose his summer holiday pay, by the time Henry got his residence permit at the end of November this year and could begin the paperwork to get his CPR and tax card this month, the family had been without pay for an unexpected 5 months.

“Because my dad had passed away, we had the money. But otherwise, we would’ve been fucked to be honest,” Anne said.

Anne and Henry are not their real names. They have requested anonymity due to the private nature of the shared information.

Maria was in Ukraine with her toddler when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, just because she needed to go to a couple doctors’ appointments. At the time she was over a year into her process applying for a family reunification visa on the grounds of being married to her Danish husband, but although she was allowed to stay in Denmark during the processing of her application she was not automatically allowed access to the public healthcare system in Denmark.

“I lost three years of my life to this process,” Maria said.

She met her husband through mutual friends while she was working in Denmark, they knew they wanted to spend their lives together in Denmark, especially once she was pregnant. They first applied for spousal reunification in 2020.

Their first application was denied because the immigration authorities felt her husband had not proved enough financial security to sponsor her. They immediately appealed the decision, and she was allowed to stay in Denmark for the following months while the appeal board considered her application.

“It's exhausting, so much so that it has a huge impact on our relationship,” Maria said. “It’s another way of life is when you go have constant stress because you don't know which paper you got today, and what you need to prove that you did nothing wrong.”

After the war started she could stay in Denmark under the Special Act for displaced Ukrainians to live in Denmark, and later that year was accepted for family reunification with her daughter who is Danish.

“You know, they want families to integrate and to do all these things, but they traumatize people,” Peter said. “She has two educations, and she could not even work or volunteer for two and a half years.”

Now Maria can stay until her children turn 18, but she’s still reeling from the process.

“It’s living life to survive until the next day, until you will get some kind of paper, which make you to feel a little bit sure about the next day,” she said.

Maria and Peter are not their real names. They have requested anonymity due to the private nature of the shared information.

Sandro couldn’t join Kamilla for their first ultrasound appointment, because he was stuck in New York, unable to return to Denmark until he heard from the authorities about their family reunification application.

Sandro met Kamilla in a bar in Lima when she was travelling around South America for eight months.

“We were trying all the time to see each other,” Sandro said. “We started seeing each other everywhere. We met a couple of times, in Colombia, in the States, in Peru, back in Peru, back in the States, all over we had some vacations together.”

When they talked about settling down Kamilla wanted to live in Denmark. They applied to get married in Denmark, and once they had the permit, they were married by a local politician Kamilla’s mother knew because all the appointments for marriage in the timeframe of their permit were booked in Copenhagen. Then they started the family reunification process.

“You could know beforehand which documents you had to have, really, but I mean, it took a long time to, go through the application,” Kamilla said.

The submitted the application early July this year and then carried on with their honeymoon plans in Miami. But about a week before leaving, friends warned them they shouldn’t leave, so they called the immigration service to check. They confirmed Sandro wouldn’t be able to re-enter Denmark after leaving the country.

“How am I meant to know this? Because we haven't received anything,” Kamilla said.

This information is available on the New in Denmark website, and is on the application receipt, which hadn't yet been send to them months after the application was sent. They didn’t anticipate the issue. At this point there were no appointments left for Sandro to apply for a re-entry permit. So they left for their honeymoon and Sandro went to stay with his sister in New York near the Danish embassy to wait for the answer.

After the honeymoon they also found out Kamilla was pregnant.

“I was like, bartending in New York, but it was the not knowing that was very annoying,” Sandro said.

“They say, it will take a maximum of seven months, and you cannot plan anything, because you cannot know,” Kamilla said. “It's just like, you can get it tomorrow, you can get it in five months. It's really hard to handle.”

Kamilla paid the required deposit right after getting home from Miami, and then just waited to hear back from them.

“Everything was settled, and we were just waiting for someone to accept us”

They finally received the acceptance over a month after the payment was received.

Erika and Dennis were in Mexico for her brother’s graduation when they got the long-awaited update from the immigration authorities.

“Sunday night, we arrived in Mexico, we ate tacos, it was the best day,” Dennis said. Then early Monday morning they woke up to an e-box from Udlændingestyrelsen. Their application had been denied.

“In the last page it said now you can move to Mexico. There you are allowed to be with your wife,” Dennis said.

What followed was a sleepless week as they stayed up all night on the phone with the authorities and lawyers. Erika’s re-entry permit was no longer valid following the decision, but she wanted to go home to Denmark with her husband at the end of their vacation.

The reason their application was denied was because of the housing requirements. Dennis’ apartment was a temporary contract although they are in the middle of construction for a new home.

After submitting their application last May, they had sent in additional information later about their housing contracts. When they submitted the appeal, later that week, the authorities allowed Erika to return to Denmark for the next four months waiting period.

“There's no way to know how the process is going,” Erika said. “It's frustrating not knowing what's happening.”

They just got word from the authorities at the beginning of December that their application should be accepted following the deposit.