Learning from history is about more than just lip service,” he added, in what appeared to be a reference to the Nazi dictatorship, which made race ideology, ostracism and the deportation of Jews, Roma and Sinti, gay people and many others the cornerstone of its politics. Scholz continued: “Democrats must stand together.”
I’m not sure how you intended your first line, but it bristles a bit. Especially given that my comment started off explaining that Germans tend to dismiss the difficulties of immigration.
Things are very different city to city (as your wife is probably aware if she has any immigrants as friends), and the differences aren’t what you’d think. I have a couple of Arab friends in Halle, who get two year visas in the middle of their studies that basically get rubber stamp approved. Köln, on the other hand can be awful in terms of bureaucracy. I’m in a big college town, so a lot of international students live here and the office is totally overloaded (the university is not new, they should have hired more people in the fifties and kept up with immigration), but unlike Berlin, they are less likely to grant you residence because of that.
I’m still waiting on permanent residence, ideally it will be easier after that. I have to visit or call the Ausländeramt multiple times to make sure that they actually process my renewals (which they do for only a semester at a time because of Uni), including reassembling documents (bank statements, insurance, school status) for them every six months. They can’t give me permanent residence yet, because they fucked up the paperwork on our marriage license, listing me incorrectly, so they have to reprocess things. I assume they’ll forget until I remind them again at least twice, and then there will be at least one more fuckup before things get pushed through.
My point was that once you are married to a German citizen you are entitled to getting residence. Of course getting that pushed through can be a huge pain in the ass, I’m in no way denying that. But once the process is done you should be fine.
I’m currently entitled to residency, but the AfD got more votes than the left did where I live. Even SPD is getting shitty about immigrants. I’m not certain that it will actually go through before the government changes and I have to jump through different hoops to get it.
I’d love to have your trust, but I’ve been an immigrant for years and married for months, so I dealt with the ausländeramt alone for much of that time and I’ve seen how much they fuck up (again, they’re overworked, it’s the city’s fault). If in five years I’m still in Germany with no significant issues (and my students’ stories get a lot more hopeful), I’ll start to believe that permanent means permanent.
Good luck bro. I really didn’t want to minimize the struggles of immigrants here, which I’m very aware of. And I hope all Nazis get testicle cancer.
Thanks. You’re good! I actually realized during this exchange that the disconnect is probably because you grew up in a functional country that didn’t tell you you had rights, while showing you that you didn’t.
Quite so. Germans like to endlessly gripe about Germany, but if you go to almost any other place you realize that this is definitely one of the better places to be in.