British man to be deported from Denmark over late post-Brexit paperwork

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

A British national living in Denmark is being deported from the country because he was late in filing his post-Brexit paperwork, according to a report.

Phillip Russell, a 47-year-old financial services administrator, received an order in May which said that he was four days late with new residency documentation that he did not realise he needed post-Brexit, reported The Guardian.

He had moved to Denmark to be with his fiancee in October 2020, three months before the Brexit transition period ended in December 2020.

Last week he received a notice informing him that his deportation appeal had failed.

“You must leave Denmark no later than one month from today’s date, which means no later than 6 December 2022. As a consequence of our decision, you also no longer have the right to work in Denmark without a work permit. Therefore we will inform your employer about our decision,” it said.

Mr Russell said that being asked to leave the country is a disproportionate punishment for him missing a deadline.

“I feel completely devastated. I’ve been through 11 months of hell already, with no end in sight apart from being deported, so that means I’m going to lose my job, my home, my fiancee, being dumped back into London,” he told the Guardian.

Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet reported that the country's immigration authority Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI) had issued three letters warning Mr Russell and those like him.

"Although there is generally a lot of attention around the consequences of Brexit, since the autumn of 2020, SIRI chose as a service to issue three information letters to approximately 19,000 resident British citizens and their family members," the newspaper quoted an excerpt of the response from SIRI as saying.

"In the briefing letters we stated that British citizens had to submit an application for renewed right of residence. To people who did not have the opportunity to receive Digital Post, SIRI sent the information letters by regular, physical post."

SIRI said that they received a total of 256 applications that did not meet the deadline.

Mr Russell's fiance Frederikke Sørensen said that the couple had visited SIRI but had never heard of an application deadline.

"We visited SIRI when Philip got his residence permit, and there we were told that now he should not take any further action. But suddenly there was an application deadline that we had never heard of," Ms Sørensen said to the outlet.

"Of course I hurried to apply as soon as I found out. But that didn't matter," Mr Russell said.

His case has been taken up by Danish MP Mads Fuglede, who said the action is a breach of the spirit of the withdrawal agreement to protect EU citizens’ rights. But Mr Fuglede said he had not received a reply from the former immigration minister Kaare Dybvad before the country went to the polls for last week’s election, and he now fears it could be weeks or months before a new government could take up the matter.

Mr Russell is not the only person facing the brunt of post-Brexit rule changes around visas and residency documentation.

In April 2021 around 40 people on a flight from Manchester were turned back upon arriving at Alicante-Elche airport in Spain after a dispute over post-Brexit paperwork at the airport.

In March this year, a report from Oxford University’s Migration Observatory sounded the alarm on “pre-settled status”, which requires people to reapply within five years or become irregular migrants.

The report warned that more than two million EU citizens and their families who hold temporary immigration status could see them lose their UK residence rights and be removed from the country.