By David Vranicar
univers@au.dk
Wanting to make the transition from country-hopping backpacker to full-time student as smooth as possible, Thea Coventry went to the Danish Embassy in her native Australia on 24 May and submitted her student visa application.
Coventry, who is pursuing a law degree, had already been admitted to Aarhus University as an exchange student for the autumn semester, which started at the end of August. By applying for her student visa in May, she gave herself plenty of time.
The same is true for Elsy Melkonian. Like Coventry, Melkonian didn’t want immigration issues tainting her move to Aarhus. So in the middle of June, Melkonian submitted her student visa application to the Danish Embassy in Damascus, Syria, where she has lived since she was a child (she’s originally from Armenia).
Her visa, she was told, would arrive in Damascus at the beginning of August.
Nearly all of the hundreds of international students who study in Aarhus navigate the residency process without a glitch. But as Melkonian and Coventry can attest, when there is even a minor problem, students can be subjected to a dizzying introduction to Danish immigration policy. An introduction that can last for months.
In June, Coventry embarked on a long-planned vacation in Europe, confident that by the time she got to Denmark in August, her visa confirmation letter would be wait-ing in her mailbox.
“The max amount of time they said they needed was two months, and my university wasn’t starting until mid-August,” Coventry says. “I specifically asked about that and the Embassy confirmed that that was sufficient time. I’m think-ing, ‘OK, this is all fine. It’ll just come soon.’”
But after ten weeks had passed, Coventry, who was now in Aarhus, grew concerned – and her concerns were well founded. She rang the immigration authorities and was told that the statement she had provided declaring her financial solvency had been rejected.
Instead of a personal bank statement, Coventry had submitted a letter from her home university verifying her scholarship, as well as the conditions of her student loan package: through an exchange-student agreement, her expenses in Aarhus would simply be added to the student loans she was accruing in Australia.
“The Danish immigration people said that was fine,” Coventry says, “and the Danish immigration authority in Australia said it was fine too.”
She then decided to ask her boyfriend’s father to open a bank account in her name. The father, who lives in Germany, complied with her request, opening a joint bank account for Coventry and her boyfriend.
She finally had the single missing piece of her application. Or so she thought.
Shortly after submitting her student visa application, Melkonian received an email saying that it would be processed within six to eight weeks. After six weeks had passed with no word on the status of her application, she started making calls to the immigration authorities in Denmark. The application, she was told, was being processed. Be patient.
But six weeks turned to eight, and eight to ten. It was now September and she was stuck in Syria, unable to legally enter Denmark. Oh, and her classes had already started.
“There are a lot of arrangements you need to make,” says Melkonian, who is getting a Master’s in journalism. “But I couldn’t do anything. What should I do? Should I go to my job and tell them that I quit? Should I take out money? What do I do? It was a really tough time for me. You don’t know what the next step should be.”
“It was really horrible. I really came to a point where I cancelled the whole idea in my mind.”
On 12 September, nearly three months after submitting her application, Melkonian received word from the Danish Embassy in Damascus that her visa was ready. She promptly quit her job and bought a plane ticket.
She got to Denmark 11 days later, on 23 September. The exam for her first class, which she had yet to attend, was due the next week.
This isn’t how the immigration process is supposed work. And, to be fair, this isn’t how the immigration process usually does work. Henriette Skouenborg, who works with the Danish Immigration Service, says that 95 percent of student visa applications – if properly completed – are processed within the allotted two months.
“I don’t find that this is a very common problem,” Skouenborg says. “So one of the things you need to bear in mind is that although you might hear problems from one or two people, overall we are very efficient.”
Having worked at the Aarhus University International Centre for ten years, Kaja Bertelsen has seen this efficiency in action. She has dealt with hundreds of international students studying at AU, and she says that the vast majority are handled without any problems.
Most of the issues, according to Bertelsen, stem from the embassies in the countries where the applications originate. This past summer, for instance, Bertelsen was confronted with a pair of students who submitted applications at an African embassy that had simply stopped processing them. Bertelsen says there were six months of unprocessed applica-tions sitting at the embassy which had never been sent to Denmark.
“In general,” Bertelsen says, “it’s mostly because of the Danish embassies: problems at the embassies, not really with the Danish Immigration Service as such.”
AU and the Danish Immigration Service, she says, have “a great relationship.”
But that didn’t help Coventry and Melkonian: at no point were they contacted by the Danish authorities regarding their visa applications. And even after they arrived in Denmark, their headaches weren’t over.
Toting her bank statement, Coventry went to the immigration office in Aarhus in mid-September. At this point she was actually living in Denmark without a CPR number – which means that she was not a real citizen. She didn’t have insurance; she couldn’t so much as check out a library book. When her bike was stolen, she wasn’t allowed to file a police report.
Coventry happily handed over the document that would, in theo-ry, be her final step towards obtaining her residence permit. But the immigration authorities told her that they could not accept the bank statement because the account was in the name of Coventry and her boyfriend: it wasn’t technically her account.
Coventry was then told that if she wanted a residence permit she would have to open her own personal bank account. One problem – you can’t open a bank account in Denmark without a CPR number, and you can’t get a CPR number without a residence permit. It doesn’t take a law student to detect flawed logic here.
Melkonian’s problems didn’t stop at the border, either. Like Coventry, circumstances required that she open a bank account, and like Coventry she lacked the CPR number to do so.
Citing a fear of compounding her problems, she declined to elaborate on the details.
Bertelsen, who is familiar with Melkonian’s situation, says, “That was very unlucky. That was definitely one of the more dramatic cases. That’s not how it usually is.”
At the time of publication, both Melkonian and Coventry said their immigration issues were ongoing. Melkonian was still without her CPR card, and Coventry was wait-ing to receive her residence permit confirmation (which she needs to apply for a CPR number).
Melkonian and Coventry realise that they are in the minority when it comes to student visa problems, but that’s hardly consolation.
“It’s just a stupid system,” Coventry says, “where if one thing goes wrong, you’re prevented from doing everything. Complete frus-tration. You fall into this crack in the system, and it’s horrible.”
“It’s so hard,” says Melkonian. “I really wish these things would be over and I could be at peace.”
