As a non-Dane, I need a work permit for me and my family to live in Greenland. When I applied, I was told the process would take about two months. Two and a half months later we had packed down our house, reorganised our lives, and were on a plane to Denmark, but our permits had not arrived. The day before we flew to Greenland, I desperately emailed the Danish Immigration Agency, who manage immigration for Greenland, and just before leaving for the airport the next morning, I received an email with a letter allowing us to reside in Greenland – for one year.
That’s when I learned that work permits for Greenland are valid for only one year, even with a permanent work contract. Each year, I fill in the same paperwork, send a copy of my same contract, a copy of my passport and wait about three months for the next one-year permit to be issued.
For my first renewal, I applied three months in advance because it takes them three months to process the documentation. They sent it back to me, saying they don’t accept renewal applications until they are within two months of expiry. So I sent it back two months before expiry, and it took them three months to process it. Because I had to travel in that month when I had no valid permit, I went to the police to apply for a ‘temporary permission to re-enter’. This interim permission also takes a few weeks to process. I received my passport back with two pages taken up with Shengen visas to allow me to transit through Denmark, even though I don’t need a Shengen visa to transit through Denmark. My husband and son got the same treatment, even though they have British passports, so obviously don’t need Shengen visas. When I finally received it, my renewal letter stated that I had permission to reside in Greenland until 1973.
I have been told that after seven years of living in Greenland I will be eligible to apply for permanent residency, negating the requirement for a work permit. But I have also been told that this doesn’t mean I that would the right to live in Denmark. I don’t understand that, as Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and citizens of the realm have the right to live anywhere in the realm. Also, the whole social, political, and judicial fabric of Greenland is intertwined with Denmark. I would be interested to see how that works. What documentation would I – could I? – get that would allow me to live in Greenland, but not in Denmark? Even most Greenlanders have Danish passports, not Greenlandic ones.
Despite all the administrative focus on making sure visas are up to date and noone slips through the immigration net, in the perhaps thirty times I have travelled in and out of Greenland in the past fifteen years, through five different Greenlandic airports, I have never been asked to show my passport entering Greenland. That includes when we moved to Greenland. On that occassion, I thought we really ought to let someone know we were moving into the country, so after some effort we tracked down an immigration officer at Kangerlussuaq airport on arrival.
“We’re moving to Nuuk from Australia,” I said. “Would you like to see our documentation?”
“No, that’s fine,” she replied.
