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Mine too! My residence permit expired in February, and my appointment is in July. I expect to have a valid residence title again by end of August. Mind you, I
by nicbou 3y ago
Mine too! My residence permit expired in February, and my appointment is in July. I expect to have a valid residence title again by end of August.
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.
- chironjit 3y agoI'll one up you and say that it's so broken, there are lots of people that basically live on ranges of exceptions. 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.
- nicbou 3y agoYes, bureaucrats can act as gatekeepers for things that you are legally entitled to, and create various bureaucratic hurdles. It's usually mere thoroughness, sometimes incompetence, and if you cross them, vindictiveness. 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).
- bratwurst3000 3y agoThis is so true . There is a word for it in German… behördenwillkür. Mean they can do with you as they please. Advocate insurance is a must here. I hate the bureaucracy here. Lawyers are the only help
- nicbou 3y agoLegal insurance does not cover immigration a lot of the time
- ffsm8 3y agoGermany's head of state was involved in the biggest financial scandal of its existence and forgave a corrupt bank that stole millions of taxes just a few years before going into office. corruption is spreading like a plague with no consequence in sight for anyone involved.
- tcmb 3y agoOlaf Scholz is the head of the government, Germany's head of state is its president, currently Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
- marenkay 3y agoIf you believe corruption is just spreading now, you missed every single politician since the founding of Germany. Or every other country on the whole planet therefore. Wikipedia documents that well enough.
- fps_doug 3y agoThis sounds like all of you are living in Berlin, which is known as "failed state" to the rest of Germany. ;-) 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)
- apflkx 3y agoUnfortunately, this is not just a problem limited to Berlin :-( [1][2] 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-auslaenderbehoerde-dieter-reiter-video-chaos-studenten-aufenthalt-schlange-zr-13570759.html https://www.merkur.de/deutschland/muenchen-kvr-auslaenderbeh... [2] https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/stuttgart/auslaenderbehoerde-arbeit-stuttgart-arbeitskraefte-mangel-verwaltung-chaos-100.html https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/stuttgart/a...
- wouldbecouldbe 3y agoTry Spain, takes years
- pezezin 3y agoI guess that depends on the city and the procedure, but I had to replace my DNI last summer and it took me less than 30 minutes, and they gave me the new one on the spot. 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.
- wouldbecouldbe 3y agoYeah had a close person getting passport after marriage, took years, they made a mistake, another 1.5 years. Took over 5 years in the end. Lawyers making mistakes, civil cervants making mistakes, making mistakes themselves. Big mess. They are actually breaking EU law while doing these things.
- ricardobayes 3y agoThat actually was very interesting for me, living in Spain, how extremely common mistakes were in data entry, generally. If anyone hands you a form to check your details, you can almost guarantee to find some issue. I've never noticed this living in any other country yet.
- nixass 3y agoFolks, you can travel outside of Germany for sure, as long as you stay inside Schengen.
- mkesper 3y agoPlease add a link for people relying on this info.
- stavros 3y agoA link to what? Travel within the Schengen area is unrestricted, you can drive or fly to wherever you want and nobody will check passports.
- rkachowski 3y agoThis isn't true, this year I have been on a train from Marseille to Berlin and German police checked everyone on the train for passports at the border specifically to check residence validity - and removed one passenger with a residence permit as he attempted to reenter Germany (he was informed he was not initially permitted to leave)
- stavros 3y agoThose are random spot checks, there's no border between France and Germany where everyone's passport will be checked.
- bondarchuk 3y ago"nobody will check passports" "Those are random spot checks" So there are random spot checks where people will check passports. So "nobody will check passports" is false.
- stavros 3y agoFine, word lawyer, "nobody will check passports above the base rate of passport checking you may get anywhere, including any random trip".