German lawyer: Immigrants should not lose patience with the family reunification visa!

Deutsche Welle: In recent years, many workers from the Western Balkans have come to work and live in Germany. Many of them of course want to reunite with families who have left the homeland. How does the German legislature regulate this?

Yosif Altundag: Family reunification for people coming to Germany, especially those from the Western Balkans, Albania, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, etc., is regulated by the law of residence in Germany. If a family member lives in Germany, then there are regulations that guide family reunification. Most often, this is how we had the experience, it is the spouses, or the fathers of the children, those who come to Germany, you know, Germany in recent years has needed a lot of workers. That is why the Regulation of the Western Balkans was established, which legally regulates this.

When can family members bring these workers who are currently in Germany under these rules?

This of course depends on the type of residence permit they have, but as a rule they can bring the children and other family members after two years to Germany. But there are exceptions, always depending on the type of residence permit. The problem we had in the past, now the situation is better, is, that people went to the German embassy, ​​applied for a visa there, the embassy did a registration, and then nothing happened, the questions did not get answered. And in part people then waited more than 18 months for a visa schedule. Obviously a difficult situation. Here were the spouses, the spouses in the region, the request was made,… there were cases of pregnant women who were only partially with other children. That was unbearable. Here in Germany we started to deal with this, the embassies partially did not even react. We tried to arrange a schedule from here, and we managed to give the schedule faster. So the help of a lawyer was really needed to secure a schedule. Some could not wait, for them this phase was too long. Many can travel without a visa to Germany, so they came here and then tried to apply here.

What problems does this path that family members choose bring with it?

Of course this is not wise, because a visa procedure must be developed as required by law, which is very strict here. There are only a few exceptional cases where this procedure is not required to be performed, and this is of course a decision based on evaluation. I would not advise anyone to come to Germany without a visa for a longer stay, this is penalized. For this a visa procedure should start and just hoping that the foreigners office will give up the visa procedure is speculative and you should have a little luck. There are cases that are seen as cases of special difficulty (“Härtefall”), but there must be many reasons for a case to be categorized as a difficulty that allows exceptions.

What case could be categorized as such a case?

Ex. when the wife is pregnant and has two or three small children and where there is no one in the country of origin who can help her, or we have cases where diseases play a role. But these must be very, very strong reasons and the legislator looks at this very carefully. I would therefore recommend that the visa procedure be completed, because in most cases a visa is issued.

Yes, but with how many delays… because it is known that embassies in the Balkans are extremely overloaded…

This is unfortunately so, with procedures that take a year even longer, a year and a half. We have raised this as a problem. Very hard to find someone there. We needed a lot of work.

What conditions must the family reunification applicants meet in general?

Livelihoods must be secured. This is important. And here there are problems, often in Germany there are fathers, but they do not earn much and want to have two or three children and a wife, but the salary is not enough. The authorities look at this very carefully, because they do not want them to switch to the state social assistance system. The money that the state gives for children is not a problem, you can take it and it is calculated on the salary. But the request for a visa procedure at the embassy is also very important, because many from the Western Balkans lose patience and seek to obtain a visa here. But this is wrong. I have personally had many such cases from the Western Balkans, but I accept those cases where I see a chance.

If we focus on income, which you call very important, can you give us a concrete example of how this is calculated concretely?

Let’s say a family has a father, a mother as well as two children, aged 10 and 12. The father earns 1800 euros per month. The rent costs 600 Euros. The calculation that can be done is this:

Babai 1800, –

The children’s money is a total of 438, –

Rent 600, –

Spouse monthly need 449, –

The wife’s monthly need is estimated at 404, –

The need of children 311, –

Of the other child 311, –

From this in the end remain 163 euros, which means that with this livelihood is provided. And the office of foreigners makes a forecast, which emphasizes the importance and possibility of obtaining an unlimited work permit.

Income is a very important criterion, the other language. What language skills do family members need for family reunification?

Applicants must also have language skills. Level A1 is required for the spouse, and the relevant certificate must be submitted. Children do not need language certificates when they are under 16 years old. Courses for over 16 year olds, and this is very problematic, are required to provide very good knowledge of German in the countries of origin.

What mistakes can applicants avoid?

The first is that they lose patience. They apply for a visa at the embassy and come to Germany, they say that I made the request, to see if it is not resolved in Germany, I have seen this in the clients. One mistake I often see is that they have gone to non-certified language schools, ie that the embassy does not recognize them. This must be seen carefully. Schools must be certified and recognized by the embassy, ​​otherwise the language course certificate will not be recognized. Ex. institutions such as the Goethe Institute or schools must have Telc identification. It often happened to me that the applicants were in the wrong schools, they paid and the document was not recognized./DW

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