Just want to add that if you can't qualify for one of the working visas or a family based visa, which can be tricky due to the many specific requirements, you shouldn't lose hope. If your girlfriend is a Danish citizen or a citizen of another European Union country you can make use of the EU rules regarding free movement of labor, i.e. live and work in Denmark without a visa and without financial requirements, without having employment at hand, without expensive application fees or the other usual obstacles set up to make immigration hard.

This follows from the Metock ruling from the European Court of Justice:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...

In short, the Metock ruling says that the free movement of labor entitles any EU citizen to bring a partner/family member, who is a citizen of a third country such as the US, with her when she moves from one EU country to another for work.

To make use of this ruling both of you will have to move to another European Union country to work there for a short period (for example 3 months). You will probably have trouble getting working visa there but your girlfriend can work there as an EU citizen. You don't have to go further away than across the bridge to Malmö. It will probably be necessary to marry, since the requirement for unmarried is a "durable relationsship", which you may not fulfill in such short period (as I understand it you met recently).

You need to live in the other EU country, not just stay there at a hotel. To be well within the requirements your girlfriend should try to work there in what is at least a half time job. She doesn't have to get any kind of qualified job.

Though they are reluctant, the Danish immigration authorities are obliged to explain how you benefit from this EU loop hole if you ask them about it. Be sure to ask in detail about the requirements.

Good luck, and welcome to Denmark :-)

You could also try to hit up the Robocat guys (http://robocatapps.com/) and ask if they know someone in the community who have any open positions.

I don't know how well they're doing, but Planely (http://www.planely.com/) offer visas for employees, and I imagine they'd love to have you there.

Airbnb also have a Copenhagen office, and while they don't explicitly have an open position, I imagine they'd love to make an exception for you: http://www.airbnb.com/jobs/locations/copenhagen-denmark.

I have no idea how getting a cool developer gig in Copenhagen works, but you could do worse than those suggestions.

EDIT: Oh, right, there is also the newly re-released Django People: https://people.djangoproject.com/dk/. Check out the profiles and see if any companies and openings show up.

EDIT2: You could also try setting up a profile on http://angel.co aimed specifically at Copenhagen.

EDIT3: You could also check out LinkedIn and Quora. I doubt they'll get you anywhere, but it doesn't hurt to try.

explain

I thought EU citizens were free to move to other EU countries without questions?

http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/justice_freedom_secur...

Pretty good for a country with half the population of New York I'd say.

Update: Seems DHH started RoR while studying at CBS.

Legos? That and crappy weather that makes staying inside a good idea:-)

I always played with "Legos" as a kid, so for me that's what they are.

Worse of all its just not nice, you might have inferred from his comment he isn't qualified to x, what do you think people inferred from your comment, about you?

On "disagreeing being one" - looking forward to your comments ("Fed up") on each thread of HN. It's human nature to differ on views, and express alternate opinions, and that is of value.

Regardless, my point is that yours did not add any value to the conversation at all, it did not leave an open door to discuss the state of the labour market, or ask "hey, are you saying that from experience?". Worse, you called someone you don't know unqualified.

Even if you happen to be the labour minister of Denmark, you still should have tried to add value to the conversation.

Edit (and last I'll say): "It's human nature to differ on views, and express alternate opinions, and that is of value."

DUDE - If thats what you'd done, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You didn't offer an alternate opinion.

Anyway, that is all. Have a good day.

Come to Founders House, Gothersgade 8d, 1123 Copenhagen. It's a shared working space with 15-20 web startups. Ask for Luca from Evertale (me). We don't need to hire but I am happy to give you an introduction to all the companies and possibly someone might need your skills! You will find us any working day 9:30-18:00. We'll be on holidays in August, so try to come in the next two weeks.

Good luck and take care,

Luca

We're hiring developers!

You have a national holiday that last a month?

Today we do development in Barcelona and with some externals, but our main office is in Denmark and I could use someone locally who can work independently. We are making a very successful daily deals site in Denmark and 7 other countries.

Best of luck

- Jonathan

Edit: also, tradeshift have their development offices in CPH.

Yet another edit: A Danish blogger recently assembled a list of Danish startups. Try looking through that for a match.

http://www.version2.dk/blog/opdateret-liste-over-danske-ivae...

https://careers.microsoft.com/search.aspx#&&p4=DK...

Good luck!

monster.se and se.indeed.com are pretty good for generic job listings. Also i've found universities here (i.e. http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/about-lund-university/jobs , http://www.mah.se/english , http://www.slu.se/en/ ) are a good place to look for Python jobs, as a lot of bioinformatics/science dept. are looking for developers. I guess you might also try blocket.se and thelocal.se , as there are some jobs posted there...

Lastly, not too clear about your situation, but another option might be to enroll in a Pd'D program, as they will give you a visa and a decent wage. This is true in either Denmark or Sweden.

But, just to be warned, Denmark does have a reputation of having rather harsh visa requirements. I'm not joking when I say a lot of people in Malmö moved here because of the somewhat recent Danish crackdown on visas.

There are a bunch of other companies in the same space in Sweden alone, apparently: http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/05/25/mobile-payments-....

You can check out The Duffy Agency (English language ad-agency in Malmo), no idea what their hiring situation is. Very nice team of guys.

They're hiring iOS devs and seem like a good company. Offices right next to the central train station too.

Seems like Denmark is a lot easier. Their points based system still let you in without a work permit (but only with certain occupations and if you have a masters degree or better) or if a Danish employer offers you more than 375k dk ($80k US), you won't need to get a work permit either.

P.S. We should totally make a Django meetup in Denmark soon!

http://www.nyidanmark.dk/en-us/coming_to_dk/work/greencard-s...

http://jobs.hasgeek.com/view/g7588

/Søren P

The atmosphere is nice and international. It's organized yet dynamic; fast paced yet relaxed. They're a relatively young start-up and last I heard they were well funded. Give them a call or drop them an email. :)

Full disclosure: I used to work with these guys before they moved to Copenhagen.

Basically, you set up a business presence in the US (an address and a phone number.. which could be a paid virtual office service and a SkypeIn number... and stick with US bank accounts, file a D/B/A, etc.), then you simply work remotely, all the time.

From the Danish perspective -- my experience is in France, but I know other European countries have variations on the same theme -- basically you prove to them that you have sufficient money and external income to stay in Denmark, housing (your gf would sign an affidavit), health insurance, and they give you a visa for a year, which you can renew each year by proving the same thing over again.

In France you have to apply from outside the country, so if you have to get things set up in the US this would be the time to fly back there to get the process going.

Whatever you do, best of luck; my wife & I have worked our way through different immigration statuses in various countries, and it's always frustrating.

Another question is whether he would be interested in avoiding Danish taxation.

If he chooses to incorporate in Denmark, the taxation is a flat 25 percent of the profits, and - which is just as important as the percentage - most expenses can be deducted when calculating the profits for tax purposes. I don't believe American corporate tax is lower.

If he doesn't incorporate, or if incorporates and pays out salary from his corporation to himself, he is taxed personally. The Danish income taxation is on a progressive scale, ranging from around 10 percent to around 60 percent but again with quite good possibilities for deductions. As a rule of thumb, most people end up paying little more than 40 percent of their total income, even if it exceeds USD 100,000. I don't think the combined federal tax, state tax in California and social security is much lower than that.

As an American citizen, the US would tax him on his world wide income although he is no longer resident in the US. But there are different possibilities for tax deductions such as the foreign earned income exclusion for the first USD 95,100 made abroad. Also, there is a double taxation treaty between the US and Denmark which may take care of any taxes exceeding the USD 95,100.

Anyways, he would have to talk to both a Danish and an American CPA about that. It would be very expensive. In my experience, tax planning is for large corporations, not for the rest of us.

In France during that time, I wasn't a resident (and not allowed to work for a French company, or get any benefits of residency); I was a long-stay visitor. It's a status designed for people who's lives, income, and often main residences, etc. are based elsewhere who just have a reason to stay in X country for more than the normal tourist visa (but they'll be going back someday, probably).

If he gets sponsored by a Danish company, he'll surely need to pay Danish taxes then. Though it's possible he'd get a discount; I know the Netherlands gives US immigrants (my brother among them) a significant tax reduction -- to US-similar rates -- to make immigration there more enticing.

If he does need to pay Danish taxes at some point, quite right, there's a treaty to avoid double-taxation -- whatever he pays in Danish taxes would be basically subtracted from what he owes in US taxes.

In France as a long-stay visitor, I was required to submit French tax returns (where I owed nothing, and it's pretty simple -- the middle-aged ladies in the tax office are really nice to me) and US tax returns (where I have a US accountant to help me out; he's not hugely expensive, actually, even though we have bank accounts in 3 countries and own residences in two; I think we paid about $1K last year).

Danish taxes are probably closer to the French system (fairly simple) than to the US system (horrendously complex unless you just have W-4 income), so he may never need a Danish accountant.

It would be nice if tax planning were just for large corporations, not individuals; unfortunately, depending on how interesting you make your life, sometimes it's unavoidable. :)

You will have 3 options I would say, one, get a job that pays you enough/is on the positive list(this is what I did), but you will pay out your ass in tax and not have the right to stay if you lose the job. Two, get enough points on the Danish immigration system to stay(unlikely I would guess, but I haven't looked in a little while). Three, what I would suggest, keep freelancing but pay tax in the US, spend 3/6 months in DK. You will spend less in plane tickets by a ton then the difference in tax.

I can't really push this tax bit enough, the difference in cost of living combined with the high tax will change your lifestyle most likely. Unless you find someone who will pay you 2X what you make now you will end up with less in the bank and not be entitled to a lot of what the Danish welfare system offers. Just a warning. All the best in CPH!

We have native SDKs (open-source [android, ios, javascript, and blackberry]) and are developed in Ruby on Rails on the back end. Send me a message if you are interested.

As far as I know they do have a sales office in Copenhagen though.

The Danish dev team is working almost entirely on V8 and Dart which is primarily C.

They work on very specific things related to optimization of virtual machines and programming language design.

http://www.gamedev.se/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7030&start=0...

Denmark also has a central job site (run by the govt), and LinkedIn has a lot of jobs there as well.

Look for other americans on forums. They should know the drill.

Look for an authorized translator. Born in US. She can probably advise you the best.

Search for a way to get an extension. Even if that means you have to go back to US for a couple of months. If the girl is serious she should still be in Denmark 3 months later.

Bottom line, avoid begging for a job.

It is not permanent solution, but it give you some more time to get better visas.

http://www.westart.dk/

http://it-jobbanken.dk

You've got your head up in the clouds man. You actually think you'll find an employee who is loyal to your company above all other things in the world, even his soulmate? I can't help but laugh at this attitude.

Take a look through human history and find me some literature about the epic struggle of a man to satisfy his boss, above all other things, including his family and wife.

I think it is a very honorable thing to be committed to a woman (or man, or robot) and if it were me doing the hiring I'd not discriminate against someone who's actually being honest about his priorities rather than blowing a plume of smoke up my arse.

Hiring foreign employees is a lot different than hiring locals. Depending upon the country, sponsoring a visa can cost a lot of money and, more importantly, a lot of time. That lost time takes many forms. You'll have reams of paperwork. You may have interviews with immigration departments. You may need to find and/or furnish an apartment. You may need to spend weeks holding the new hire's hand after he arrives, teaching him how to deposit his checks in his new land, buy groceries, etc. And you may need to set your plan in motion months ahead of time to keep the organization running smoothly.

So when you invest all that time into bringing someone on board, and then they just quit shortly after arriving ("LOL broke up with gf seeyaltr"), it hurts. It hurts bad, for months, while you scramble to find someone else. And it's not the kind of mistake you make twice.

Without understanding exactly how it works in Denmark, I can nonetheless understand an employer's reluctance to subsidize a foreigner's love life.

And that doesn't rule out explaining what brings him to the country.

Really? In what way? I have never ever heard anyone in Sweden talk about Denmark that way.

Good luck!