Waleed, Sudan

Refugees Welcome was contacted by Waleed while he was an asylum seeker because the processing time had been unusually long. He was eventually granted asylum after 14 months but then faced further waiting, as it took 16 months for the family reunification process with his wife and 3 children.
 
We wrote on our website about his worry that he would not be able to afford the price of the plane tickets to bring his family over due to only receiving integration benefit, as the state had stopped covering these costs. However, during the long processing time he managed to get a job, which solved the problem. Soon after, RW initiated a support programme for flight tickets, helping hundreds of families.
 
RW complained about the waiting time in 8 applications for family reunification, which we all represented, where the expected processing times ranged from 14 months to 2 years, and Waleed was one of them. Most of the cases were resolved just days after our complaint. The newspaper Information also wrote about the long processing times.
 
When the decision finally came, it shocked us all: permission was granted for Waleeds 3 small children but denied for their mother! RW contacted Information again, which published 2 more articles, while we appealed to the Danish Immigration Service. The media coverage prompted the service to reopen the case, ask RW for more documentation, and eventually grant permission for the mother as well.

The case changed future practice, as the Immigration Service admitted that there was no basis for claiming that the cohabitation had been voluntarily broken off. We had 3 similar cases reversed shortly afterwards, including Abraham’s. Here you can read an excerpt from a response by Minister Støjberg to a member of parliament about the case.