> The same classmate later told me that she had moved to Berlin to work at a German company, but still hadn't finished setting up her residency paperwork. The l

> The same classmate later told me that she had moved to Berlin to work at a German company, but still hadn't finished setting up her residency paperwork. The latest step at that time was receiving a letter from some German department, which she had to put in another envelope and send back, in order to receive another letter inviting her to set up an appointment to come and be interviewed. I'm going to guess that letter was some kind of verification from the Department of Labor to say that the person was legitimately needed to do a job that couldn't be done by some EU person. They need to hand it off to the Immigration Department to let them apply for a residency permit. I'm not entirely sure, because I never had any to get any similar letter, and I was exempt from that process. However, as for the question of keeping government departments separate and isolated from each other, this isn't really a bit of German bureaucracy gone mad. It used to be that Common Law countries would like to keep government departments firewalled from each other, to prevent the government from building up Super Files about everyone that they could use to oppress them later on. I think the Common Law countries have generally become so happy with their government that they no longer fear it as a possible source of oppression, whereas Germans have recent history of actual government overreach, and retain or regained this tradition of keeping government departments separated from each other. Obviously the questions of which boundaries can be crossed and which boundaries should not be crossed is going to be an issue that is up to each separate country to decide based on its own history. (For instance, the German government did a police check on me, to make sure I didn't have a criminal record, but I wasn't part of that; whereas to get a residency permit for Australia, the applicant has to get their own police checks - when the immigration department asks for it - and then pass them on.) I think this kind of issue should definitely be kept separate from the question of how difficult it is to open a business, and the use of notaries etc etc. You're entitled to be irritated by it, but it's a political decision of a country about perceived risks, not ignorance or rentseekers who can't be worked around. So your irritation should be directed to the Department for Avoiding Totalitarian Dictatorship, and not the Department for Overwhelming Bureaucracy.