A British man is being deported from Denmark because he didn't know he had to stay in the country after leaving the country.
Will Hill, 37, was ordered to leave by Sunday. His application to stay, made three weeks late, had been rejected, as was an appeal to the immigration authorities.
He will return to London on Friday, leaving behind his fiancee, Ida B gelund Larsen, who said the decision had left her worried and confused and nervous. The wedding they planned in January is now in doubt.
He said that this wouldn't happen to me if it wasn't for Brexit, because I would be treated as an EU citizen. Two weeks after another British national, Philip Russell, told how he was facing deportation, Hill s case came to light. Like Hill, he did not know until after the deadline he had to apply to remain in Denmark post-Brexit, and was ordered to leave on the grounds that his application was four days late.
He called for the British government to condemn Denmark's behaviour. He said that Denmark is using the incompetence of their own immigration services as an excuse to deport UK citizens.
The cases were a breach of the withdrawal agreement, and the Danish immigration department, SIRI, has to re-examine the cases of the estimated 290 British people who applied late for their Brexit paperwork, according to a liberal party EU spokesperson, Mads Fuglede.
He told the Politiken newspaper that the communication by SIRI to British nationals about the need to reapply for residency rights for post-Brexit life was unsatisfactory and not working Hill, who voted to remain in the referendum, had no choice but to return to his parents' home in Surrey. He is planning to apply for a visa under family reunion rules, hoping he will not miss his wedding in Denmark at the end of January.
Under the withdrawal agreement, any EU citizen in the UK or British citizen in an EU member state could remain in the country with residency, employment and social welfare rights. Both Russell and Hill say they received no communication to that effect after Denmark set a deadline of 31 December 2021 for residency applications.
Beyond me being in a coma and saying I wasn't aware that I needed to do this, there doesn't seem to be any way around this, said Hill.
When his application was initially rejected, he made an appeal, complying with requests for evidence of settled life and work in Denmark.
They asked me to give me so much information about my life, my relationship with my partner. They asked me to provide photographs of me and Ida, but in the end they rejected it because I missed a deadline. He said that they weren't interested in the fact that I have integrated into the country, that I am working full time, that I am paying my taxes.
A spokesman for SIRI said it could not comment on individual cases. She said the department had made every effort to ensure that the application process was as simple as possible and that the government had launched information campaigns with extensive information about the consequences of Brexit, and that there had been 290 late applications, suggesting that many British nationals now face deportation.
The Foreign Office said the UK government had run a major campaign to inform UK nationals about the impact of Brexit, and more than 18,000 British nationals had applied for post-Brexit residency rights in Denmark.
A Foreign Office spokeswoman said that the Danish authorities will accept late applications if there are reasonable grounds for missing the deadline.