Citizenship delay left Nicola afraid to start a family

Nicola Ens says years of uncertainty over her right to stay in Denmark made her hesitate to have children. The Canadian woman is now among applicants left waiting after the country paused citizenship decisions, DR reports.

Ens applied for Danish citizenship 1,122 days ago. Around New Year, she was told she met all the requirements and could expect to become a citizen in October. She has since been left unsure what will happen.

Citizenship applications are on hold until spring, while politicians expect a new law that would screen out applicants with anti-democratic views. People included in a citizenship bill in January can still expect to become citizens, but Ens was not among them. She will have to wait for screening under the new rules, and worries the process could take years.

Some 487 people were told through e-Boks, Denmark’s digital mailbox, that they could expect to become citizens in October. The Alternative and the Red-Green Alliance are pressing for those assurances to be honoured. The minister is due to answer questions about the issue today.

Ens, who is married to a Dane and works as a lecturer at the IT University, says the citizenship process has been extremely difficult. During her first 10 years in Denmark, she had temporary residence permits that had to be renewed. She feared that if she and her husband, Rune, separated or he died, she could be forced to leave the country. Under the Aliens Act, she could have been required to leave within 15 days if her permit was not renewed.

The uncertainty made her wary of buying a home and having children. It also led her to try to work continuously as an academic, despite the difficulty of finding stable work in research, where many jobs are tied to projects. Without enough work, she could not apply for permanent residence.

In 2022, Ens was told she could stay in Denmark permanently. She says she began crying, left the office and told colleagues she could not work that day. She now has a three-year-old daughter, is pregnant again and has a permanent lecturer position.

Senior researcher Eva Ersbøll of the Danish Institute for Human Rights has questioned whether the pause complies with Denmark’s obligations under the Citizenship Convention. She said applicants should know what requirements they must meet, and argued that pausing cases until new rules are introduced means Denmark is not, in practice, providing usable citizenship legislation.

The Social Liberals and the Moderates say there is no majority for the citizenship bill in its current form, meaning people who had been led to expect Danish citizenship will have to wait. Moderates citizenship spokesperson Mohammed Rona has said he does not consider that fair. Ens says she accepts that parliament can tighten the rules, but argues the delay affects people who have waited years and deprives them of security and equal rights.