Questions and answers

The deadline for appealing to the Immigration Appeals Board (Udlændingenævnet) against a decision from the Danish Immigration Service (Udlændingestyrelsen) or SIRI is normally 8 weeks from the day you were notified of it. Treat that date as fixed. An appeal that arrives late is usually rejected without being considered at all.

The question that follows almost immediately is what happens to the departure deadline stated in the refusal. An appeal can carry suspensive effect, which means you are allowed to remain in Denmark while the case is being processed even though that deadline is approaching. Whether it does depends on the type of case and on the rules the decision was made under.

EU cases follow their own rule. If the refusal was issued under EU law and you appeal within 7 days of the date of the decision, the appeal will generally have automatic suspensive effect, and the departure deadline is put on hold until the Board has dealt with the case.

That does not carry over to refusals under the Danish national rules on residence and family reunification. There, suspensive effect is decided case by case, and there is no automatic right to stay in the country while the appeal runs.

Because both deadlines are short and missing them is hard to undo, it is worth having the refusal read quickly. Beyond filing on time, there is often a separate argument to be made for why you should be allowed to remain in Denmark while the case is decided.

There are two separate costs. The Immigration Appeals Board (Udlændingenævnet) charges an appeal fee of approximately DKK 1,000, paid directly to the Board.

On top of that comes the legal work. For an appeal case our fee is typically in the range of DKK 10,000 to 15,000, depending on how complex the case is. You will have that figure before we start, not after.

The first job is to read the refusal properly and work out what actually decided it. From there the appeal can be built around that point rather than restating the original application in a louder voice.

Appeal cases tend to sit in the more technical corners of immigration law, family reunification, permanent residence and work permits among them, and in those areas a small error or a missing document can carry more weight than the merits of the case. Part of the work is finding mistakes in the authority's own decision, setting the case against the Board's established practice, and putting forward the circumstances that deserve separate weight: children, family life, or evidence that has only become available since the refusal.

None of that guarantees an outcome. It does mean the Board decides on a complete and properly argued case, which is not always what reaches it.

You can challenge it, but not in the way you would challenge most other immigration decisions. There is no appeals board for citizenship, no equivalent of the Immigration Appeals Board (Udlændingenævnet).

The first step is normally to ask the Danish Nationality Office (Indfødsretskontoret) to reopen and reconsider the case.

If you believe the case was handled wrongly rather than simply decided against you, for instance because the reasoning was inadequate or a procedural step was skipped, you can complain about the handling itself. A letter to a member of the Parliamentary Citizenship Committee (Indfødsretsudvalget) is also open to you where the handling of the case looks unfair.

When the ordinary options are exhausted, the case can be put to the Parliamentary Ombudsman (Folketingets Ombudsmand). The Ombudsman cannot grant citizenship. What the Ombudsman can do is assess whether the authorities handled the case correctly and recommend that it be looked at again.

In rare cases turning on a genuine error of law, the matter can go before the courts.

So a refusal is not necessarily final, but the routes are narrow, because Danish citizenship is granted by an act of Parliament rather than by an administrative decision. That is precisely why it is worth having the refusal assessed before choosing which route to take.

It comes down to the good conduct requirement, where the authorities look at whether you have kept within Danish law over a longer stretch of time rather than at any single incident.

Fines can trigger a waiting period, speeding tickets included. A larger fine, in practice from around DKK 3,000 upwards, generally means a waiting period of about 4 years and 6 months counted from the date of the decision. Traffic fines are treated like any other, and several fines can be counted together, so a pattern of repeated offences pushes the period out further than a single one would.

Public benefits can have the same effect. Social assistance and education support may both lead to a waiting period, and its length depends on which benefit was received and for how long. In practice it often runs to several years, because it goes to the question of whether you have supported yourself. There is no single fixed period covering every type of benefit. It turns on the circumstances and the legal basis of the individual case, but it weighs on the overall assessment.

The point worth holding on to is that the waiting period is not calculated from isolated events. It reflects a view of your conduct over time, and small violations matter if they repeat.

Exemptions exist. The Parliamentary Naturalization Committee can waive or shorten the consequences of a waiting period where the circumstances are special. It is a political and legal assessment made case by case, and there is no right to it.

Because so much depends on the particulars, the useful first step is to establish whether a waiting period applies to you at all and, if it does, when it runs out. Applying before that point rarely helps.

The starting point in current Danish citizenship law is that a suspended or an unconditional sentence excludes you from being included in a naturalisation bill for a period of time. Criminal convictions weigh heavily in the good conduct assessment.

What the authorities look at is the type of offence, how severe the sentence was, and whether a waiting period is currently running against you. The applicable waiting periods are set out here: retsinformation.dk.

Both suspended and unconditional sentences produce a waiting period, and while it runs there is no realistic prospect of approval. How long it lasts depends on the seriousness of the offence and the sentence, and it can be several years. In practice the single most important thing is that the period has expired before you ask the Parliamentary Naturalization Committee (Indfødsretsudvalget) for an exemption.

An exemption can be applied for, but it is not something you are entitled to. It is granted on an individual and political assessment, and applicants who have let the waiting period run its course before applying are in a considerably stronger position than those who have not.

Whether one is granted depends in the end on the political majority in Parliament and on how the Committee is composed, since every case is considered on its own. Alongside the conviction itself, the Committee looks at the whole picture: whether you have got your life back on track, found steady work, completed an education, built real ties to Denmark, and shown a clear development since the offence. The nature and gravity of the original crime remain a major factor throughout.

These cases are discretionary rather than mechanical, and an exemption application needs a strategy behind it as much as documentation. That usually means establishing first whether the waiting period has actually expired, and only then whether there is a realistic basis for asking. Part of the work can also be approaching members of the Committee directly and putting a properly structured application in front of them.

The official processing time is normally somewhere between 20 and 24 months, and around 23 months from the date of submission is the figure usually quoted. In practice it can run longer, depending on the political situation, the capacity of the administration, and any changes to the legislation along the way.

There is a faster route in some cases, often referred to as fast track, where an application can be through in roughly 6 to 12 months. It applies where every requirement is met in full and nothing in the case calls for a further assessment or an exemption.

What tends to stretch the timeline is that Danish citizenship is granted by an act of Parliament. If a bill is delayed by an election or by political negotiations, the cases attached to it are delayed with it. A case also takes longer when it has to be considered individually by the Parliamentary Naturalization Committee (Indfødsretsudvalget), which is usually where an exemption has been requested.

Whether your case is likely to run on the standard timeline or the shorter one is worth establishing early, because it depends almost entirely on whether the application is complete and clean when it goes in.

The question is what happens to the employment requirement, and the answer is more forgiving than most people expect, as long as the absence sits inside an existing job.

Illness, parental leave and holiday do not in themselves break the requirement, provided the employment relationship continues and you are expected back with the same employer afterwards. What matters is being able to show it: an employment contract, payslips, or a statement from the employer confirming that the job is still there.

You must also, as a rule, still be employed when the citizenship bill is formally put before Parliament. Full-time work is not always necessary at that point. If you have already completed at least 3 years and 6 months of employment within the 4 years before the bill is presented, and you are still working at least around 15 hours a week, that can be enough. The requirement is a genuine attachment to the Danish labour market, whether through permanent employment or a fixed-term position with work actually being done.

Where it does fail is when you are outside the labour market altogether at the moment the bill is presented: unemployed with no job to return to, in education or on an internship, in a subsidised position, or working fewer than about 15 hours a week.

There is a route out in serious cases. An exemption from the employment requirement can be applied for where you have become permanently unable to work through serious illness, or have acquired a disability after an accident. It calls for current medical documentation showing that a lasting physical, psychological, sensory or intellectual disability is what prevents you from meeting the requirement.

These cases turn almost entirely on documentation and on exactly when the absence fell, so the first thing worth doing is establishing whether you still meet the requirement as things stand, or whether the case has moved into exemption territory.

Applying before your 22nd birthday opens a route that closes the day you turn 22: you can ask to be exempted from the employment requirement. It is aimed at applicants who arrived in the country under the age of 8 and who satisfy the general conditions in other respects.

The deadline is the part to take seriously. Apply after turning 22 and the ordinary rules take over, and with them the usual demand for full-time work over 3 years and 6 months, counted at a minimum of 120 hours a month.

Everything else still applies. The Danish language requirement, the good conduct requirement, the citizenship test and the remaining conditions all have to be met in the normal way. What the youth route removes is the one requirement that is usually hardest to satisfy at that age.

An exemption is not automatic. It rests on a properly written application setting out why you want Danish citizenship and why the employment requirement has not been met, which for most applicants is because they have been in full-time education. What strengthens it is evidence: diplomas, any employment contracts you do have, voluntary work, and anything else showing where your life is anchored and how you have integrated.

The Parliamentary Naturalization Committee (Indfødsretsudvalget) assesses each of these individually, which is why the application itself, rather than the bare facts, often decides the outcome.

There is more than one cost, and the fee is only part of it. Alongside the application fee you should expect expenses for translating documents and for biometric registration, and in some cases a financial security deposit.

Under EU rules there is generally no application fee at all. Under the Danish national rules the government fee is currently around DKK 9,000.

For the legal work, our fee for a family reunification case is typically between DKK 15,000 and 20,000, depending on how involved the case turns out to be. You will have the figure before anything starts.

It depends on which set of rules your application falls under. Family reunification under EU rules usually takes about one to three months. Under the Danish national rules it is closer to eight months. If the authorities come back asking for further documentation, add to both figures.

Much of the delay we see is avoidable. A file that arrives complete, with the relationship properly documented from the start, does not go back and forth. Where a case is genuinely complicated, having someone follow it up with the authorities and answer their questions promptly is usually what keeps it moving.

Yes. A refusal of family reunification usually leaves two routes open: asking the immigration authorities to reopen the case, or appealing to the Immigration Appeals Board (Udlændingenævnet). Which of the two fits depends on what the refusal actually says and on the circumstances behind it.

That is the reason to have the decision read closely before anything is filed. A refusal that turns on a missing document is a different problem from one that turns on how the authorities have assessed your relationship, and the two call for different answers. Getting that right is often what turns a refusal into a residence permit.

The most common causes are documentation that does not go far enough, financial requirements that are not met, and housing or integration requirements that fall short. A case can also be refused because the authorities are not satisfied that the relationship has been sufficiently documented, or because they suspect it is a pro forma arrangement.

In what we see, the integration requirement and suspicion of pro forma account for a large share of refusals between them. The assessment on the Danish side is thorough and it is strict, and a deficiency that looks minor from the outside can be enough on its own.

That is the argument for getting the file right before it goes in rather than repairing it afterwards. Where a pro forma assessment is already in play the work is different again: it is about building up the evidence that the relationship is real and closing off every requirement still open to doubt.

It depends entirely on whether you apply under the Danish national rules or under EU free movement rules. The two are not variations on a theme. They differ both in what they require and in how strictly the authorities read the file.

The national rules are the harder of the two. An application under them normally has to satisfy the 24 year rule, a housing requirement, a requirement that you can support yourself without public assistance, a financial security deposit, and the integration requirements. These cases also reach further back: your earlier residence history and how integration has gone can be weighed alongside the formal conditions. On top of that, the Danish Immigration Service examines closely whether the marriage or the relationship is genuine, and that examination is thorough. It is the part of the process where a well prepared file makes the clearest difference, and where a lawyer can also tell you whether an exemption from one of the requirements is realistic in your situation.

Under the EU rules the conditions are looser. There is no equivalent demand on housing, income or integration. What has to be shown instead is that the EU citizen genuinely made use of free movement by living in another member state, and that the relationship itself is documented. SIRI still looks carefully at whether the relationship is genuine, so that part does not go away, but the assessment is generally more lenient than under the national rules.

The short version is that the national rules ask more of you and the EU rules ask less. What they have in common is that both stand or fall on documentation of a real relationship. That is the one thing worth putting effort into before you send anything, whichever route applies to you.

You can apply once you meet the core requirements, and residence time is only one of them. The others are a stable attachment to the labour market, self-sufficiency, and passes in the Danish language tests and the citizenship test (indfødsretsprøven). The minimum period of residence is either 4 or 8 years depending on your situation.

So the timing is not simply a matter of counting years. It is a matter of whether every requirement is satisfied on the day you apply. Applying at the earliest possible point, after 4 years, means the basic and the supplementary conditions all have to be in place by then.

The rules here are technical and they change, which is why it is worth having the case checked before the application goes in. A refusal you could have foreseen costs time you do not get back.

In our experience the employment requirement accounts for most of them. It is the requirement that catches people out, and it does so most often where the applicant is self-employed or runs a sole proprietorship, because proving the work in those cases is harder than simply producing payslips.

After that come errors in the documentation itself. They do not have to be large. A file that is incomplete or inconsistent gives the authorities a reason to refuse without ever reaching the substance of the case.

Having the case reviewed before submission is the cheapest way to deal with both. It improves the odds of approval and, because there is less going back and forth, it often shortens the processing time as well.

The authorities look at whether you are genuinely running a business and putting in work equivalent to full-time employment, which in practice means somewhere around 120 hours a month.

You therefore need to show two things at once: that the business is active and financially real, and that the hours behind it are yours. What carries that is the paper trail as a whole: annual tax returns and accounts, the VAT filings behind them, invoices raised, and bank statements showing the money actually moving.

What makes these cases awkward is that the Danish Immigration Service assesses the overall picture rather than the income figure. We see sole proprietorships with quite healthy revenue refused, and businesses turning over very little approved. The assessment is individual to a degree that makes comparison with other cases unreliable.

Which is why the useful question is not whether your business earns enough, but whether what you can document adds up to full-time work in the way the authorities read it. That is worth establishing before you apply.

Mostly by getting the case right before it is submitted, which is where both the outcome and the processing time are decided. An application that arrives complete and properly documented gives the Danish Immigration Service less reason to come back asking for more, and that alone can take months off a case.

Before anything is sent, the requirements are worth going through one by one: residence period, employment, self-sufficiency, language. The point is to establish whether you actually meet them, rather than finding out from a refusal.

During processing the work shifts to answering the authorities. Requests for further information have to be handled properly and promptly, because a slow or partial answer is one of the more common causes of delay.

And where a case has stalled without good reason, it can be chased. Asking for a decision is sometimes the only thing that moves a case that has been sitting still, which is worth knowing on long-running matters.

There is a window here, and it is narrow. You cannot apply before you turn 18, and to use the more favourable rules for young applicants the application generally has to be in before you turn 19. In practice that means applying soon after your 18th birthday, as soon as the requirements are met.

What the youth route offers is an exemption from the employment requirement, which at that age is usually the impossible one. What it asks in return is an unbroken run of schooling, sometimes alongside work. You are expected to have moved through your schooling without significant interruption.

Take that literally. Even a short break, or one that has not been explained, can cause problems in the assessment and in the worst case decide the case against you, because the authorities look at whether the requirements have been met continuously rather than eventually. A pass in Prøve i Dansk 2, or a Danish language exam of the same level, is normally required as well.

Because the rules are technical and the deadline is unforgiving, this is one to look at early rather than at 18 years and 11 months. The questions worth answering in advance are whether you meet the requirements, when exactly to apply, and whether the exemption from the employment requirement is available to you.

Danish embassies and consulates abroad normally decide visa applications within 14 days.

That only holds if the embassy can decide the case itself. Where it cannot, usually because documentation is missing or because there is doubt about the relationship between the applicant and the person inviting them, the case is passed to the Danish Immigration Service (Udlændingestyrelsen). That adds roughly 45 days.

Almost everything that pushes a case past the two weeks is already present in the file when it is submitted. Getting the documentation complete and the relationship properly evidenced from the start is what keeps a case inside the shorter timeframe.

You have two options: appeal the decision, or submit a new application with better documentation behind it. Which one fits depends on why the visa was refused and on the circumstances of the case.

It is worth thinking about that choice rather than defaulting to an appeal. An appeal can take several months. Where the refusal came down to documentation that was missing or thin, a fresh application with the gaps filled will often produce an answer far sooner.

Either way the starting point is the same: work out precisely what the refusal turned on, and make sure the next submission answers that point directly instead of repeating the first one.

A refusal on migration risk means the authorities are not satisfied that you would leave the Schengen area before the visa runs out.

That conclusion is usually built from several things at once. An application that is incomplete or thinly documented invites it. So does a lack of evidence that you are tied to your home country: steady work, family, obligations that would bring you back. Your earlier visa history in Schengen countries counts too, both where you have complied with the conditions and where you have not.

From a refusal you can either appeal or apply again with stronger documentation. The aim in both cases is the same, to show clearly what holds you in your home country and what the trip is actually for.

The part that decides it is usually specificity. A migration risk assessment is discretionary, and a new application that answers the exact reasons the embassy or the Danish Immigration Service gave in the refusal will get further than one that presents the same case again more forcefully.

It means the authorities are not persuaded that the relationship between you and the person inviting you is genuine, or that it has been documented well enough to show that it is.

The suspicion is rarely based on one thing. It builds from a combination: how much the two of you appear to know about each other, whether there is documentation of contact over time, how many visits there have been, a large age gap, a language barrier, or a visa history containing similar refusals. What the authorities assess is whether the relationship holds together as a whole.

You can appeal, or you can apply again with the evidence filled in. What tends to carry weight is the ordinary record of a real relationship: message histories, call logs, photographs, travel records, and anything showing visits and time spent together.

These assessments are discretionary and they are strict, so the work is as much about finding what the first application left unanswered as about adding more material. A refusal on this ground can be answered, but it has to be answered on its own terms.

Yes, in many cases. Moving from a student residence permit to a work permit is possible provided you meet the conditions for a new residence permit based on employment.

In practice that means a job offer from a Danish employer, in a position that satisfies one of the schemes, commonly the Supplementary Pay Limit Scheme.

The reason this question comes up so often is that the answer depends on details: the type of job, the salary on offer, and the residence status you currently hold. Those three between them decide which scheme applies and whether the switch works at all, which is worth establishing before you hand in a notice or sign anything.

Both are Danish work permit schemes that let a foreign national work in Denmark on the strength of a job offer at a certain salary level. The minimum monthly salary is currently around DKK 37,300.

Between them they are the most used route to a Danish work permit, which is also why the documentation requirements are heavy. An application has to account for the terms of employment, your work experience, the salary and the working conditions, and it has to do so consistently.

Which of the two schemes fits depends on the specifics of the job and the offer. Establishing that first, before the application is built, is what keeps a case out of the refusal and delay categories.

It means SIRI is not satisfied that the job is real and offered on ordinary Danish terms.

The doubt usually comes from one of a familiar set of patterns. A salary that looks high for the nature of the position, and so does not read as customary by Danish standards. Qualifications and experience that do not obviously match what is being paid. A close relationship between applicant and employer, whether family or personal. Errors, inconsistencies or gaps in the employment contract and the supporting papers.

An application history can also count against you: moving between different positions or employers in successive applications, or changing explanations, job titles or job descriptions along the way so that they fit a salary threshold. Earlier unlawful stay in Denmark, or an application submitted just before an existing permit expires, feed into the same overall assessment.

A refusal on this ground needs to be dealt with quickly and in detail, because the answer has to be legal argument backed by documents rather than assertion. The work is reading the employment contract, the supporting material and the case history together, finding what produced the doubt, and then deciding whether an appeal or a fresh application is the better way to put it right.

A partshøring means SIRI has doubts about part of your application and is giving you the chance to answer before it decides. It is not a refusal, but it is usually the point at which the case is decided.

Start on it immediately. Fourteen days goes quickly once you are gathering documents or waiting on your employer. If you genuinely cannot make the deadline you can normally ask for an extension, but the request has to come in good time and with a reason behind it.

Then work out what SIRI is actually asking about. The letter will usually be circling one of a few things: the salary level, whether your qualifications match it, whether the employment is genuine, or your relationship with the employer. Bear in mind that SIRI often sends your employer a letter at the same time, so whatever the two of you submit has to line up.

Do not change your account. Explanations that shift from what the application originally said, even where the change feels like a clarification, damage your credibility and make a refusal more likely.

Where the concern is about qualifications against salary, answer it plainly and professionally rather than defensively. What is wanted is the connection between your experience, the work you will actually be doing, and what that is worth under Danish employment standards.

These letters carry a great deal of weight in the outcome, and a focused reply that meets SIRI's specific concern is worth considerably more than a long one that does not.

We give you a fixed price before any work starts, as far as the case allows it. After the first conversation you will have a clear figure, so nothing arrives later that you were not told about.

Where a case genuinely cannot be priced as a fixed sum in advance, we say so and give you the closest estimate we can rather than leaving it open.

It depends on the authority and the type of case. As a rough guide: family reunification at the Danish Immigration Service (Udlændingestyrelsen) usually runs 6 to 12 months. An application for Danish citizenship can take more than 2 years. An appeal at the Immigration Appeals Board (Udlændingenævnet) can take 10 to 12 months. Cases at SIRI are normally quicker, between 1 and 3 months, depending on complexity and on how much the office is carrying.

These are estimates and they slip. Part of what we do while a case is running is keep track of where it actually is, so you are not left guessing, and follow it up with the authority where it has been sitting longer than it should.

The first contact is a telephone assessment of your case. It commits you to nothing. We go through what you tell us and give you a view of your legal options and of how likely a good outcome actually is.

That conversation is usually enough to establish whether there is a case worth running and what the next step should be.

If it can proceed, you get a plan: what happens in which order, which documents we need from you, and where the case can be strengthened before anything is submitted. Knowing that at the start is worth more than it sounds, because a great deal of what decides an immigration case is settled before the application is sent.

We advise in Danish, English, German, Kurdish and Turkish, so you can put your case to us in whichever of those you think in.

That matters more than it sounds. An immigration case turns on details you have to be able to explain precisely, and on advice you have to be able to act on. If either of those passes through a language you only half follow, something gets lost along the way. We would rather take your case in your own language, from the first conversation to the decision.