Mind you, I applied in December. I will not be able to travel out of the country for most of the summer as I wouldn't be allowed to reenter.
They refused multiple times to issue the temporary permit that I'm legally entitled to. I'm having a lawyer ask again, this time with the threat of a lawsuit.
It's such a common problem that I had to write a detailed article about it. People miss weddings and funerals because the immigration office is months late. The number of lawsuits due to inaction is growing exponentially since 2019.
In my case, I was told I was not eligible for the visa I needed but when I spoke to a migration consultant who knew the process, they managed to get it done. I was pretty shocked as this wink, wink, nod, nod style system is not something I expected from this country.
I was told more than once by very knowledgeable people that if you anger a case worker, they can and will make your life hard by nitpicking every little detail and asking for as many documents as they can.
This happens for example if you get angry at their incompetence, or if you sue them for inaction (although in Berlin they see it as normal business by now).
corruption is spreading like a plague with no consequence in sight for anyone involved.
Wikipedia documents that well enough.
It varies form city to city, I live in one that I'd say is an exception on the positive side: Most clerks in the various offices are actually helpful and even giving you hints. I had to renew my passport in January and got an appointment the next day. I got the appointment online(!) in Germany(!!). Passport could be collected 4 weeks later. Meanwhile an ex-colleague who lives in Berlin had to wrestle with his nearest office to even get an appointment for a passport renewal, then gave up and made an appointment with the office in the neighboring district, where it was still a 4 weeks wait. He told me there are districts where it takes up to 6 months.
I guess if you want pain and suffering, move to Berlin. :o)
It's been an absolute mess trying to secure my wife's settlement permit ("Niederlassungserlaubnis"). She has a german Master's degree, works in a government-funded research facility, and has been in the system since December 2022. We've now been ghosted for 14 months, only to be told to make an appointment to provide additional documents (which were not on the 'required documents' list they initially handed to us). After checking the appointment booking website to no avail, I came up with a python script that sends a notification to our phones when a new appointment pops up. It took 40 days of scraping until a new free appointment was available, only to be allowed to provide paper documents in person.
Adding to that, every six months, her employer threatens to fire her if she can't prove her legal status in Germany. So she's constantly jumping through hoops to get this temporary paper permit called "Fiktionsbescheinigung" just to keep her job. It's a hassle, costs €13 each time, and involves cycling through multiple unhelpful bureaucrats at the Ausländerbehörde's hotline (they do not answer emails) until finding one that very reluctantly produces this document.
All of this is beyond frustrating.
[1] https://www.merkur.de/deutschland/muenchen-kvr-auslaenderbeh... [2] https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/stuttgart/a...
In comparison I also had to renew my Japanese foreign card and later my ID card, and both procedures were a royal PITA, and in both cases I had to wait a month to get the new card.
Lawyers making mistakes, civil cervants making mistakes, making mistakes themselves. Big mess. They are actually breaking EU law while doing these things.
"Those are random spot checks"
So there are random spot checks where people will check passports. So "nobody will check passports" is false.
But otherwise: keep in mind that the freedom of movement is reserved to EU citizens (and their families): if you had to get a residence permit (and thus you're a non-EU national), you don't have the same rights.
Even without temporary (Covid, terrorism, etc.) internal checks, you can be stopped by police (national laws will differ) and be asked to show proof of id, and proof of your right to stay.
The fact that you have a pending residence application in progress will usually give the right to stay in the country that you applied in, but that proof might be as flimsy as as a stamped slip of paper (not even a A4 paper with a letterhead) and/or an email in the local language. Don't expect German police to be able to read and accept your Italian piece of paper, or viceversa Italian police to read and accept your piece of paper in German.
In fact, the same applies for non-EU family of EU citizens: the residence permits will be denied only in extreme cases (e.g. terrorism)... if you're just a non-EU citizen, there are even more situations in which that would apply. Imagine that the country that you applied in might refuse your residence permit: you'd then have to leave the country and Schengen (or file some kind of appeal), and that would make it even clearer that you wouldn't have right to stay in another Schengen country.
So, you might not have right to stay (in another Schengen country), and even if you might have it, proving your right might not be easy.
About the
> Please add a link
The original request could've made sense (you could have for example linked to directive 2004/38/EC , but that doesn't apply to people who aren't EU citizens or family of EU citizens)... but note that in this case we're trying to prove a negative (the laws will usually describe which rights you have, but not in which case you don't have such a right... you might find a guidance or case law document, but those are scarcer)
Again: the whole situation is really unfortunate, because the laws are also written with the expectation that you won't have to wait long after applying for the necessary documents. And even when the laws are clear about the timelines, the bureaucracy will try to weasel themselves out of it, for example Article 10 of the aforementioned directive states:
> The right of residence of family members of a Union citizen who are not nationals of a Member State shall be evidenced by the issuing of a document called "Residence card of a family member of a Union citizen" no later than six months from the date on which they submit the application. A certificate of application for the residence card shall be issued immediately
Of course, when we had to deal with it, the bureaucracy just asserted that until you show up for the appointment (which you had to wait more than 3 months for, since you originally applied), you haven't actually "submitted your application", yet.
As an EU citizen, realizing first-hand how slow, uncertain, and oppressive our immigration system is, really left a bad taste in my mouth... If you're not a citizen of the EU or an “Annex II” country, I wish you good luck when applying for a Schengen visa, but in case that you might get rejected: don't sweat it, and just consider other destinations, if you're planning a vacation... there are a bunch more places with friendlier visa policies (e.g. Turkiye, Cape Verde, Morocco, UAE, etc.)
Practically, not anymore: there are block posts on main roads into Germany and they check passports.
Also did you forget flying?
I look like a typical WASP programmer in his forties, so no selection bias or something.
See also this marvel of brain damaged legalese: https://www.strazgraniczna.pl/pl/cudzoziemcy/najczesciej-zad...
From a incentive strucutre POV, they lose nothing from false positives (denying entry to someone who would have been fine) as candidates will probably try again anyway, and no one will come after them for their shitty procedures as by definition applicants aren't full voting citizens and stay in a weaker position possibly all their life (imagine filing a complaint and having your name on a black list the rest of your immigration life, even if that list probably doesn't exist. That fear alone is enough to let a lot of things slide)
On your experience, it really feels like a PITA. It won't help, but Japan and France are basically the same. You'll see procedures listed as typically taking 2~3 months, check back every now and then, and low and behold a year and half later you have absolutely no idea of what's going on, if your submission has been forgotten or is contentious. There's no recourse as long as you haven't been refused, so it's limbo until something happens.
People are right to bitch about these lengthy and utterly frustrating procedures, I just don't see a way out of it short of being rich, famous or finding a loophole that lets you force a government agency do something in a timely manner without getting a target on your back.
To note, France had much progress in the last decades, in that bullshit requirements were made illegal a few years ago. At least you can check everything needed on an official site and not be subjected to petty additional requirements when dealing with the local entity (yes, that was a thing, probably to make it extra hard for specific portions of the population to properly file procedures)
When did you have this experience in Japan? In my experience, immigrating to Japan is a breeze. Even during Covid, it took about 2 months to process my work visa, and from there everything was fast and easy.
PR is pretty slow, though: my coworkers who have applied are reporting wait times of about 9 months.
The standard spouse visa was around 4 months (during covid as well) when it should have been pretty quick according to the clerk receiving it. Tried PR at two different times, first time I moved abroad after half a year, before it finished, second time was a year and half from now and it's still pending with no update.
On any of the visa I applied for I'm meeting the criteria on multiple standards (e.g. I'm both a spouse and father of a national, and employed locally) and never got a rejection, so it's just plainly taking a huge amount of time. I got used to it though.
PS: also it's hilarious to write about your romance with your partner, detailing your dates, attach Disneyland photos etc. and imagine officers in their suits reading all of that with straight faces.
Do you have any examples for this? Genuinely curious.
From where I stand most EU countries right now are talking steps backwards on this as they've become overloaded with migration waves, housing shortages, stagnating wages, which increased the far right support, so the hot topic now is how to discourage ALL immigration, not how to make life better and easier for SOME immigrants to attract them.
Sure, you obviously want to encourage the useful skilled immigration, but like I said, from where I stand it seems countries don't distinguish and are trying to make life hell for all immigrants just to plase the right wing voters since those would be frothing at the mouth if they heard their government is rolling out the red carped to attract SOME immigrants, so then for simplicity the political issue is binary, IMMIGRANTS or NO IMMIGRANTS.
The official website says the wait time for permanent residency is "up to 10 months", and searching Reddit suggests 3-6 months is more normal.
Denmark is not particularly welcoming to immigrants, but they do with rules rather than inefficient paperwork.
Also this "web ui" is so bad and difficult to work with. I lost all the data I input at least twice, also the forms do no seem up to date with the requirements (requirements on newindenmark are different from what is presented on the form).
Citizenship is not the same thing as permanent residence.
I strongly disagree. If you try to attract skilled labour, such hurdles can keep many of them at bay. Germany can become known as a country that's not worth the fight. I have seen a _lot_ of stories about people giving up and leaving, usually because of immigration office delays, but sometimes because they were worn down by other demands.
It also affects the bottom line as Germany becomes a country businesses avoid, either because it's too much effort to set up the business, or too much effort to attract international talent.
You are right that immigrants are invisible as a voter base, but the cumulative effects of their neglect are significant to the German economy, and to the pensions of people who can vote.
The USCIS website also shows your status and gives a rough timeline.
Once your 'regular' visa expires you go onto a bridging visa which same, you can't really leave the country.
It's expensive as hell too: I think in the end I had a total cost of $7,000, just in application fees. Sounds like immigration is horrible everywhere.
Providing updates to everyone waiting simply wastes time and resources; again, you know roughly how long it's going to take as the estimated times are provided. Hassling the agent on your case is unnecessary.
Regarding leaving and returning Australia - Bridging Visa class Bs are made available if you have good reasons to be leaving and coming back.
I can see this from two sides - my (now ex) wife went through getting temporary then permanent residency in Australia; yes, it was a pain and expensive, but Australia has high standards of living etc, which is why lots of people want to come here. The other side is this - immigration is one of the reasons why there are not enough houses to buy or places to rent, making life difficult for citizens or people who have PR or TR. So if the process of having more immigrants who also require housing is expensive or difficult, I think you'll find a lot of people are not particular sympathetic.
People complain but its generally predictable save for applications for a 3 year visa can lead to a 1 year visa or a 3 year visa or a 5 year visa
There are 2 kinds of countries in Europe:
- Those where movies and TV shows are dubbed: Germany, France etc. Especially the older generations and working class don't speak English too well
- Those where movies are English with subtitles: Many of the smaller countries with their own native language. So everybody is exposed to English all the time and many speak English pretty well.
(Have not watched movies in the Netherlands, but I could guess many are not dubbed?)
In the case of Japan, you also have the insanely difficult writing system, probably the most difficult writing system in current usage. The German language might be difficult, but at least it uses an alphabet with a somewhat consistent spelling.
I loved living in Japan, but even where I lived in Shinagawa, it was very rare finding someone with any English skills at all unless they were young and college educated in the states.
I mean, what do you expect? European languages are all related to each other, so of course it's easier to figure things out by roots. Japanese isn't even remotely related to English, except through borrow-words. That said, I'm usually able to figure a lot of things out by simply reading the katakana, since 95% of the time it's just a borrowed English word. Of course, this depends a lot on what you're looking at: western foods almost always use katakana borrow-words, Asian foods almost never.
I guess you have never visited Finland, Estonia or Hungary...
This is a bit of an understatement. Japanese is a category-V language, taking an estimated 88 weeks of full-time study to learn, while German is a category-II language taking just 30 weeks.
Even better, it's 8000 yen, which with the current exchange rate is about USD $60.
However, I did not have any issues with the bridging visa. It gave me full rights to employment, medicare, and fair taxation (unlike the Work and Holiday Visa I started with, which drastically limited my ability to work, had me paying all medical expenses out-of-pocket, and taxed all my income at the highest tax bracket), and I traveled overseas a few times on it without any issues.
The application fees were expensive, but the bridging visa more than made up for it. I made much more money on the bridging visa than it cost me to apply, so even if my application had been rejected, I would have come out far ahead financially and had a lovely 2-year working holiday in Australia — far better than what the Work and Holiday Visa offers.
People come up with this from time to time but the logical conclusion is small governments. It has been a few centuries now and there hasn't been any progress in improving the quality of the politicians; it isn't going to change. Every single government, literally, has people in it who would be morally comfortable in a Nazi-style dictatorship. Any plan that involves empowering these people is stupid.
If your first reaction to this is “well you don’t need anything!” you must be one of the people that was astonished at how the 2016 election went.
No I didn’t vote for the guy and I hope he loses this time.
I dont even mind school taxes, actually. I just believe that the monies should follow the student and not the school district.
Because sometimes you don't have a say, or you don't expect to use it. No politician ever campaigned on making the lines at the DMV move faster. But we (mostly) all agree you should be required to get a license before you drive. Most Americans drive, and few have chose to route this "major part of their life" away from the DMV.
Immigration process (as this thread illustrates) sucks. It's also not a process used by voters.
The process to apply for welfare in most parts of the US sucks, but the actual welfare is valuable. People think by making it harder, it will instead result in people who are less reliant upon it. Welfare recipients are a huge political target constantly. They're the individuals who are "actively hated" in this example, and they're entirely dependent on the system in that moment, because thats how misfortune works.
Many cities making construction permits hard to get, because local residents don't want their neighborhood changing, so they petition local politicians to make the process slower/harder/more-expensive. In this example they "hate" the new construction.
If you're not a high schooler and you're applying to a state-funded university, the process to prove you're a local resident can be surprisingly complicated. This is because it's designed for high school students and all the edge cases are optimized to avoid accidentally providing tax-subsidized "in-state" tuition to an out-of-state resident. For example, I wanted to take a for-fun class at a local university and because I didn't have a local high school to vouch for my residency, I needed to provide (among other things) 50+ pages of tax documents. It took 2 semesters (1y) to prove I lived in the state, and the minimum amount of time you need to live in-state is 1 year.
People who live their life in the "happy-path" case often don't deal with the government, and don't understand the struggle of these edge cases. Plenty of activities require the government. No way around it. Sometimes, people who think "small government" is the solution end up making those processes terrible by making it understaffed or convoluted to "avoid waste".
The incompetence is not confined to immigration, it's pretty much everywhere. Same goes for France actually.
It's scary because the party that complains the most about it is gaining traction, and it convinces centrist parties to change their stance on immigration. It's not a pearl-clutching minority anymore, but a politically advantageous position.
As an immigrant, I feel like we're about to live a variation of the Niemöller poem. "First they came for the asylum seekers..."
If you are not doing any of that is that really that surprising that people are getting fed up with it?
I'd like to see white, christians or atheists, germans move to some of the countries those asylum seekers are coming from and see how they'd be treated.
Then we can discuss if it's the same in every country.
For instance, if Republicans are really so hateful of certain minorities, why do they not properly go after things like H1B mills (which benefits minorities more than the rich white people that they supposedly want to limit immigration to)? or take effective action to seal off the borders and make immigration policy stricter? As an immigrant myself, I'd take even that over the current hellish system where you spend a decent chunk of your life in limbo, unable to fully settle down because of the uncertainty, since at least then there would be the finality of immediately knowing the doors are closed. The only way the current system is bearable is if you approach it with total apathy, where you avoid getting too attached and just convince yourself that you can also make it in any other country.
Rather than negotiate measures to fix the immigration system (in either direction), both sides would prefer to keep expanding the class of people who are one technicality away from being kicked out, for Republicans it gives them the ability to promise stronger borders every election year, and for Democrats it gives the ability to promise aid to specifically illegal immigrants and of course once elected they can just say that the last guy left a mess and they had their hands full fixing just that or any version of "the other side isn't cooperating/compromising".
Add to that the fact that the Republicans now have a second reason not to fix immigration: they can’t run on it if it’s not broken.
If Trump gets in again he will do a lot of anti immigration theater for his base but nothing will really change. Democrats won’t fix it either. Someone has to pick berries and trim hedges.
But as a white guy from middle American (in that I lived there for 40 years) who has voted Republican and Democrat and has enough conservative ideas that people are often confused about my political leanings, I can tell you there is some truth to this.
I’ve been in the room more than several hundred times when people who were working in the American bureaucracy openly "decried the horrors of the Mexican invasion ". I will admit the majority of that was my ex’s father but it wasn’t only him. I’m certain he did not make things easier on his Mexican applicants (dmv in his case).
I’ve also heard racial slurs used hundreds of thousands of times, very few people engaging in this voted democrat.
I’m sure there are endless stupid conspiracy theories in progressive echo chambers, I hear them from time to time they are just as silly as republican ones and I would love nothing more the above comment to be correct.
In the end, their experience definitely does not match up with mine and we should all be sad.
During my naturalization I was caught by surprise by how quickly my application had been handled. The agent giving me the exam winked and said: "it's election season".
Whatever that means.
My father has only a certificate and no degree or anything like that.
It took him 20 years to get citizenship. We came 3 years after he come here and we all became citizens together.
My friends whose parents were doctors or had masters degree would get their GC and citizenships in like 5 years.
For those 6 to 8 years I had a student visa then an H1B. Despite having a PhD in the top US program in my field from a top five school.
My wife got her GC through the lottery before she finished university (ie w/ a HS diploma) with 0 years living in the US
To properly read this in your intended meaning, do we need to find the political and ethnic makeup of the immigration department? Or society at large?
Eg. Republicans hate taxes, so they defund the IRS (tax collectors), to make it harder for the government to audit tax evasion.
Perhaps too many software developers in the city government of Berlin broke the process to a point it now actually works.
I think most immigration offices in the world are pretty much black boxes, mainly because that’s their coping mechanism to deal with the influx of bargaining from rejections they would otherwise have. But it would be nice to have… some proof of progress.
I think most countries are like this. Essentially, you are in a "on-hold" status until immigration decides your fate. It's supposed to be temporary but it can take years depending on the country and the circumstance.
In many countries this is viewed as "it's not your fault, it's the state's fault that the state hasn't processed your application yet, so we will not punish you for the state's tardiness"
The people working on immigration are not lazy or unmotivated, they are exhausted.
Some of the people involved can also be extremely unpleasant to deal with, even if you speak German.
My observation was that by simply changing the view on what is happening and extrapolating how to act based on that one can achieve quite a lot.
I told people the following:
1. The person dealing with you is not there to help you, they are simply executing an act of governance. Rather than wanting them to help you, try to help them close their tickt.
2. You are the type of immigrant people actually want. These popele see lots of drama, lies, heartbreak and hopelessness. If you are pleasant and well prepared they will probably like working on your case since it will not make them feel bad.
3. Things take time. Be as early as possible with everything and realize that there early is a way to speed things up.
Keeping those three things to heart worked very well. That does not make things faster, but it takes a lot of frustration out of the process.
The reality is that bureaucracies are full of humans – and we all know how humans are.
Meanwhile I can't choose between other government services while in Germany but those terrible forced upon me by the state.
There is no perfect competition, supply doesn't perfectly meet demand, and incentives aren't always perfectly aligned ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In any case, government services change through policy and, thus, indirectly, through the electorate. But a) it lags, b) is not the only issue the electorate care about, c) the supply of money is not infinite, d) the supply of labour is not fungible and e) in this specific case, policy on immigration is generally driven by people not immigrating, so the incentives are not aligned.
Still took months with no success, because the German bureaucracy is in complete disrepair and is brain damaged.
Waiting times are annoying, but that is because of an overloaded system, everything else was pretty painless.
Isn't this just German culture, though? I had that experience just buying groceries and going through the checkout line!
That’s nonsense. The Ukrainians go through an expedited process. Before the war we put in an application for my spouse - 3rd party national spouse of an EU citizen process - we applied pretty much the day after we arrived and a few days before we left the country to live elsewhere (2 1/2 years later) we got a letter that they are considering giving her an appointment.
The German bureaucracy sucks hard.
It does not really help to have separate queues if those are served by the same worker.
Sounds like that one was largely on you…
After being here for 10+ years straight, fully working. Existence of my whole family here and our whole life depended on it, yet I clealy hit a very incompetent (and completely unreachable) bureaucrat. My boss went through same process during mine, 3 weeks and done.
The difference? He is from western part of EU, I am from eastern. Shouldn't make a difference just like colour of skin shouldn't, but it does, in 1000 ways, subtle or not, but this was by far the worst and coming from state/canton.
Utterly miserable and prolonged experience, being in legal vacuum with small kids, while doing everything precisely and timely just like Swiss do and like to see in immigrants. Lost quite a few ideals about Switzerland during those desperate times.
He is living here for like 20 years and still has to fight every year or so for the permit extension.
But the lawyer also said that it would be worth trying a consulate overseas, as they were often a lot more efficient. So (as his wife had business in Berlin) he made an appointment with the consulate in Frankfurt. From interview to getting his passport back with visa - five days.
My application went into a blackhole for more than 4 months, while my existing permit expired, essentially making me a prisoner here (I can stay and work in Germany but if I travel internationally, I won't be allowed entry back).
Meanwhile, my applications for a temporary travel permit were unanswered for months. There is no way to contact the foreign office (no email, no telephone, no fax). You just send your application and pray.
I strongly advise anyone to stay away from Germany if you have better options. This country is a bureaucratic nightmare in general.