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How does the process compare in Germany?

• galadriel 15y ago
  As a intern, my visa was quite straight forward which involved going to German embassy and getting the visa 2 days later. The trickiest part of getting work visa in Germany is to get a ZAV, but that is waived if you are a guest scientist, which also includes students of science coming for research. I have no idea about Spain, but going to Portugal for similar reason was PITA.
• hezekiah 15y ago
  I've been here four years and still don't have anything like a "permanent" residency, only temporary visa. Just getting past the "we'll deport you in a month" took about two years of going back to the visa office (Auslanderamt) once a month. And I'm a high-wage IT professional with experience. The visa I eventually received (the temporary one) is given to about 250 people a year, that's for a population of 80 million, their version of a high-tech visa. Some places like Austria are even tougher. For EU citizens there isn't a barrier generally, but outside the EU, it's very difficult. The world is a prison planet by and large and you're stuck where you are. My experienced, published Italian IT colleague was on a trip to the US as part of his US-based startup and was deported at the border when his plane landed, because he was slightly under the required 183-days-every-year-three-months-at-a-time visa waiver rule. If you think the US is attracting the best and brightest with its visa policies because you've seen some Indians at Cisco, you're grossly deluded. For the record, I'm an American citizen.