Appealing a decision
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The appeal process
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How do I appeal a decision from UDI?
Who can appeal?
- An appeal may only be lodged by the actual applicant (i.e. the person who wishes to visit or live in Norway), or by someone granted power of attorney / authorisation by the applicant.
- If you are the applicant's family member, employer or friend in Norway and wish to appeal on their behalf, you must have been granted power of attorney / authorisation by the applicant.
What is the deadline for appealing?
- You must appeal within three weeks from the date when you, your authorised representative or your lawyer received the decision, or when you should have become aware of the decision.
- Have you not managed to obtain all the documentation you wish to enclose with your appeal within the three-week deadline? You must still submit your appeal within the deadline, but you can write in your appeal that you wish to send us more documentation. You will then be given a new deadline of two weeks to submit the documentation.
How do you appeal?
- Write a letter where you explain which decision you are appealing and why you believe the decision you have received is incorrect. The letter must be written in Norwegian or English.
- Sign the letter (Appeals without a signature are rejected).
- Scan or take a photo of the signed letter and upload it in our form for sending documents to UDI. You can also send it to the police. If you have any new information or documentation, you must enclose it.
- You will be notified by email or SMS when UDI has received your appeal.
It does not cost anything to appeal.
How long will it take before your appeal is decided?
Please see our information about waiting times.
What happens when you appeal a decision?
- UDI will then reconsider your case.
- UDI can either grant your appeal or forward it to the Immigration Appeals Board (UNE) for consideration. If we forward it to UNE, you will be notified by email or SMS.
- UNE will consider your case again, and either reject or grant your appeal.
- If UNE also rejects your appeal, there are no other possibilities of appeal.
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How do I appeal a decision from an embassy?
Who can appeal?
- An appeal may only be lodged by the actual applicant (i.e. the person who wishes to visit or live in Norway), or by someone granted power of attorney / authorisation by the applicant.
- If you are the applicant's family member, employer or friend in Norway and wish to appeal on their behalf, you must have been granted power of attorney / authorisation by the applicant.
What is the deadline for appealing?
- You must appeal within three weeks from the date when you, your authorised representative or your lawyer received the decision, or when you should have become aware of the decision.
- Have you not managed to obtain all the documentation you wish to enclose with your appeal within the three-week deadline? You must still submit your appeal within the deadline, but you can write in your appeal that you wish to send us more documentation. You will then be given a new deadline of two weeks to submit the documentation.
How do you appeal?
- Write a letter where you explain which decision you are appealing and why you believe the decision you have received is incorrect. The letter must be written in Norwegian or English.
- Sign the letter (Appeals without a signature are rejected).
- Upload the signed appeal letter and additional documents through UDI's document upload service at udi.no/document. UDI will distribute the appeal to the embassy.
It does not cost anything to appeal.
How long will it take before your appeal is decided?
Please see the embassy's website (external website) for information about waiting times.
What happens when you appeal a decision?
- When you appeal, the embassy will reconsider your case.
- The embassy can either grant your appeal or forward it to UDI for consideration. You can read about how long it takes to get an answer if the appeal is sent to UDI here.
- UDI will consider your case again and either reject or grant your appeal. If you have questions about the content of UDI's decision, you can contact us by phone.
- If UDI also rejects your appeal, there are no other possibilities of appeal.
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Can I stay in Norway while UDI considers my appeal?
- If your application for a residence permit or visa is rejected, you will be given a deadline for leaving Norway. Normally. If you wish to stay in Norway while UDI or UNE is considering your appeal, you can apply to stay (This is called deferred implementation of the decision).
- If we say yes, you can stay in Norway until your appeal has been decided.
- If we say no, you must leave Norway within the deadline you have been given.
Special rules for those who have applied for a renewal or who have had their residence permit revoked
- If you applied for a renewal of a residence permit, and you applied for the renewal at least one month before your previous permit expired, you have the right to stay in Norway while your appeal is being processed without having to apply to stay.
- If UDI has revoked your residence permit, you have the right to stay in Norway while your appeal is being processed without applying to stay.
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Is it possible to have my expenses covered?
In some cases, it may be possible to have your legal expenses or other necessary expenses related to the appeal covered.
This is only possible if all four of the following conditions are met:
- UDI changed the decision in your case after you appealed
- the expenses were necessary in order to get the decision changed
- the reason why UDI changed the decision was not a change in your situation after the first decision (for example, that you received a pay increase)
- the reason why UDI changed the decision was that the immigration authorities had made a mistake, for example that we rejected your application because we overlooked that you had handed in an employment contract before we reached the decision
How do you apply?
If you wish to apply to have your expenses covered, you must send a letter to UDI where you ask to have expenses reimbursed no later than three weeks after you received the answer to your appeal. You must attach documentation of your expenses. If you have used a lawyer, you or your lawyer must send detailed information about when the lawyer worked on your case, what was done and how long the individual tasks took (this is called "spesifisert salæroppgave" in Norwegian).
How long will it take before your receive an answer?
Please see our information about waiting times.
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May I apply again?
- Even if your application was previously rejected, you may apply once again if you believe that you now meet the requirements. Please see our overview of what you can apply for and information about how to apply and where you must hand in the application.
- Even if your application for, as an example, family immigration has been rejected, you may still meet the requirements for a different type of residence permit such as a residence permit for studies or work. Please see our overview of what you can apply for and information about how to apply and where you must hand in the application.