Tighter family reunification rules

Integration minister Bjarni Kárason Petersen is planning to change the rules regarding foreign workers bringing their family members with them to the Faroes.

Specifically, he wants to introduce a mandatory minimum income requirement to ensure that non-Danish workers can provide for any family members brought to the Faroes.

A minimum income requirement is currently being used for this purpose, but it is not specifically mentioned in the legislation. The plan to make the new minimum income significantly higher than the current one.

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In addition to ensuring that foreign workers can provide for family members brought into the country, the planned change seeks to ensure that foreign nationals do not have worse living conditions than Faroese people.

The reason for the change, according to the minister, is that the number of foreign nationals arriving in the Faroes either through family reunification or as accompanying family members of a foreign worker has more than doubled since the fast-track employment programme was introduced in late 2021.

In 2021, 48 foreign nationals arrived in the Faroes through family reunification or as accompanying family members of a foreign worker. This number reached 118 in 2022.

In the past five years, 125 adults and 169 children have been granted residence permits through family reunification or as accompanying family members of a foreign worker. Thirteen of these have been granted permanent residence.

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Petersen adds that his ministry is in ongoing talks with the Danish immigration ministry about transferring the administration of residence permits from Danish to Faroese authorities.

“We are also preparing an extensive information campaign for all foreign nationals who come to the Faroes for work purposes,” he says.

“The plan remains to submit an integration bill to Parliament during the next sitting of Parliament.”

Read the Faroese version of this article here.

More Faroese News in English.