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Denmark to open work permit application to people without passports

The Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI) is changing its online application form for the Labour Market Attachment scheme to allow those without valid passports to apply, following criticism from the country's parliamentary ombudsman.

Published: 15 May 2023 17:08 CEST

Denmark to open work permit application to people without passports

The digital application for residency permits under the Labour Market Attachment scheme will be changed at the end of this month. Photo: Richard Orange/The Local

People applying for a residence permit under Labour Market Attachment scheme, or arbejdsmarkedstilknytningsordningen, currently need to fill in their passport number and passport expiry date on the online form even though holding a valid passport is not a formal condition for eligibility to the scheme.

In March, the parliamentary ombudsman asked the agency to change its form to allow people without passports to apply, which the agency has now agreed to do.

“The system so far has made it difficult, and in some cases perhaps even prevented, applicants without a valid passport from applying. I am satisfied that the agency is now changing its form”, Niels Fenger, the ombudsman wrote in a press release.

According to the press release, SIRI has said that the online form will change at some point between the end of May and the beginning of June this year.

Anyone wanting to apply for a permit under the Labour Market Attachment scheme can use a paper form up until this point.

The agency has also changed its guidance so that people who due to “special circumstances” cannot use the digital application form can be exempted from it and allowed to use a paper form.

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'A noticeable change': What Denmark's plans to change family reunion rules mean

Scott, a Dane who is married to an American, told The Local that her organisation, Ægteskab Uden Grænser, had mixed views about the bill, which will give Danish international executives the same rights to bring a foreign wife to Denmark as foreign executives, halve the bank guarantee or bankgaranti those bringing a spouse to Denmark have to leave for their local municipality, and reduce language requirements for the Danish partner.

“For some it will make a noticeable change,” she said of the bank guarantee change, “because it is going from being around 114,000 kroner to 57,000 kroner which is much more digestible, especially for younger people, so of course that’s welcome. But we just don’t think it should be there at all.”

As municipalities almost never draw funds from the deposits to support spouses who have come to Denmark, the system, she said, was actually costing them more in adminstration fees than they were gaining from it. “So it ends up becoming a cost for our municipalities and for our government, instead of serving the purpose it’s supposed to serve.”

READ ALSO: What’s in the new law on bringing a foreign spouse to Denmark?

As for the plan to allow Danish executives returning to Denmark for work to bring a foreign wife and family under the same rules as apply to foreign executives, she said this followed a pattern in Denmark where only so called mønsterborgere, or “outstanding citizens” were welcome to bring spouses to the country.

“Yes, there are some people that will benefit from this, and we’re always happy when there are regulations that change for the better,” she said. “But this is still just a small group.”

Olivia Scott is chair of Marriage without Fronteirs. Photo: private

She said the attention being given to Danish executives in the bill simply served to emphasise the gap in the way regular Danes and “highly educated Danes with a lot of money” are seen by the government.

“That this regulation is making it easier for highly educated individuals with good jobs, is, again, confirming this premise that it is only ‘outstanding citizens’ that we feel should be able to enjoy the ability to be family unified,” she said.

The third part of the new law, which alters the language requirements for the Danish partner was, she said, welcome, as many Danes who wanted to bring a spouse to Denmark were being foreced to take a Danish exam to prove their ability to speak their own native language.

“There has been a group of elderly gentleman that simply do not have the physical documentation that they passed their ninth grade. It’s called the afgangseksamen. It’s a physical document that they have lost over the last couple of decades, and so they have had to go and take a Danish test to certify their level of Danish, which is ridiculous because they’re Danish and they’ve lived and studying here their whole life.”

As for the final bit of the new bill, which will block spousal reunions if either the Dane or their partner has been charged or is under prosecution for a crime, Scott said Marriage without Borders supported the idea that someone who has been sentenced for comitting a hard crime is limited in their ability to get family reunification.

“But maybe there should be consideration paid to how long ago the crime was committed,” she said.

In addition, she said, there was little evidence that foreign spouses tended to commit crimes, so the change would have little impact.

“If you go and you look at statistics on foreign spouses family reunified with Danish citizens, the crime rate is lower in this specific group than it is among regular ethnic Danes.”

Finally, she said that even if the bill represented a step forward, her organisation intended to keep pushing for additional relaxations of Denmark’s draconian family reunification rules.

“Obviously, we hope that it’s going to go further, but we as an organisation are not going to be happy until the day when the rules for family reunion according to Danish law are equalised with those under EU law,” she said. “We cannot accept that the under EU law, you can come to the country as long as you can financially support yourself, and you can obtain permanent residency in five years, whereas for Danish laws, you are locked-into sometimes decades of struggles for no reason.”

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