Britons Get Stuck Abroad Due to COVID-19 Travel Restrictions

Britons get stuck offshore as they await the lifting of the recently imposed travel ban to and from the UK.

Many Britons get stuck abroad due to the recent travel bans imposed. Worries related to taxes, jobs, and Brexit get exacerbated as UK residents are forced to have lengthier stays in their current locations.

As more and more nations start imposing travel restrictions to and from the United Kingdom, more and more Britons get stuck in their present locations offshore. To halt the spread of the recently pinpointed highly communicable strain of COVID-19 virus, UK travel has come into a standstill.

23-year-old Heather Alder, a resident of Edinburg, went to Aarhus, Denmark with her fiancé last week. They had to visit her fiancé’s father and take him to do several tests for cancer. Alder and her fiancé were planning to go back to the UK this week but are now stuck in a farmhouse in Denmark due to the recent travel ban. “Even if the travel ban is lifted in a few days or weeks, we don’t know whether we can leave and we don’t know whether we can get back in easily,” Alder mentions.

Alder was able to secure a new job last month and she is grateful that her new boss has been so kind as to allow her to travel to Denmark. “My father-in-law’s house is about as remote as Denmark gets, so we’ve had to install new WIFI in order to be able to work from here. My boss has been wonderful about it all, but my partner is studying and working part-time for a Danish company, but pays tax in the UK. If we get stuck here for longer, we might have to report it, and he could end up having to pay tax in Denmark, where income tax is at 48%. This would have a big impact on our finances. It’s very stressful,” she shares.

The Brexit deadline is on 31 December 2020 and Alder does not know whether or not she will have to apply for a Denmark visa in case she will be forced to stay in the country for a longer period of time. “It’s very concerning that on top of everything, I now need to sort out my status here before Brexit. Due to Christmas closures, that means submitting documentation so I can apply as an EU citizen for the right to stay by 23 December. Nobody seems to have an answer as to what Britons in Denmark should do in the new year. Obviously, all our documents are in the UK, where we can’t return, which is making the whole process maddening and extremely worrying. The combination of Brexit and coronavirus has turned what was already a difficult situation into an unmanageable one,” Alder says.

The recent travel bans have caused further strain on many UK residents who are presently out of the country. Many of them complain about the need to go back to the UK in time for the resumption of work after the holidays. Nonetheless, Britons get stuck abroad and have to deal with the necessity of securing extended visas in their present locations and seek ways to do virtual ‘work-from-home’ arrangements while awaiting the lifting of the said travel ban.