A Residence Permit will mainly be granted for the following purposes:
• Family Immigration
• Work
• Study
Family Immigration
Family immigration means that a family member living abroad is allowed to come to Norway to live with his or her family. The person who the family member living abroad wishes to be reunited with must have Norwegian or Nordic citizenship or a residence permit constituting grounds for family immigration. A residence permit on the grounds of family reunification is primarily granted to close family members. After three years with a residence permit one can apply for a permanent residence permit. Close family members are considered to be:
- Spouse and registered partner
- Cohabitants who have lived together for at least two years
- Children under 18 years of age
Other family members who may be granted a permit to reside in Norway are:
- Cohabitants who are expecting a child (even if they have not been living together for at least two years) with the person
- A person intending to enter into marriage with a person residing in Norway within six months after entry
- Single mother or father over 60 years of age without any close relatives in their country of origin
- Unmarried, supported children over 18 years of age with special care needs or without caregivers in their country of origin
- Full siblings under 18 years of age without a mother, father or other caregiver in their country or origin or country of residence and with no mother or father in another country
- Other family members, when strong humanitarian considerations warrant it
How to apply?
Applications for a residence permits must as a general rule be submitted in person at the Norwegian foreign service station where you are a citizen. If you reside in another country other than where you are a citizen, you must in general have had a work or residence permit in this country for the past six months before you submit the application.
Subsistence and housing requirement
As a general rule the applicant must be ensured subsistence in Norway. The subsistence requirement, i.e. income requirement, is equal to pay grade 8 of the National Pay Scale ('Statens lønnsregulativ'). As of 12.10.2009 this corresponds to an income of NOK 217 600 annually before taxes. The amount is adjusted annually.
NOTE: The Embassy would like to inform all applicants that the new Immigration Act and Immigration Regulations comes into force on the 1 January 2010. All applications forwarded after 23 October 2009 will be processed according to the new regulations, unless they are completed by 1 January 2010. To avoid unnecesarily long processing times and extra work for the applicants as well as the immigration authorities, it is very important that the applications forwarded to the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) from now on contain all the necessary documents.
Please use this checklist for documentation requirements. The checklist should be filled in, signed and submitted together with the application.
Please note that all Thai documents must be translated into English, and verified by the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Once the case has been sent to UDI in Norway, the Embassy has no further bearing on the case. The processing time depends on the work load at UDI at any time, but you can find an average expected processing time for the various types of permits on UDI’s Web site: Please CHECK HERE.
7-day Entry Visa (D-visa)
Foreign spouses of Norwegian citizens are, as a general rule, required to submit their applications for a residence permit at the Norwegian Embassy, and are not permitted to enter Norway until a residence permit has been granted by the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI).
However, in some exceptional cases, the Embassy may grant a 7-day Entry Visa (a national D-visa) so that the foreign spouse can travel to Norway to submit the application for Residence Permit, and wait in Norway while the case is being processed. Similarly, a 7-day Entry Visa may be granted if an application for Residence Permit already has been submitted. The Embassy processes the case, but a rejection may be appealed to UDI
Applications for 7-day entry visas (D-visas) may now be registered on the Visa Portal. Simply fill out the same application form as for a Schengen Visa and book an appointment following the same procedures as mentioned above. The handling fee for a 7-day entry visa are the same amount as for a Schengen visa. The processing time for 7-day Entry Visas is four weeks.
For more information about how to register your application online, please click here.
Please use this checklist when applying for a 7-day Entry Visa. More information in Norwegian about the documentation requirements from the Norwegian spouse is available here.
The issuance of this type of 7-day Entry Visa is regulated by UDI Circular 2010-003. A separate Circular AI-08/2006 from the Ministry of Labour and Social Inclusion also has relevance for the processing of these cases.