How much time does the foreigners authority have to issue my residence permit?

The foreigners authorities in Germany are chronically overworked. Due to a rigid austerity policy and a lack of service mentality, telephone numbers lead nowhere, case workers cannot be reached and files simply disappear. Is this lawful? Are you forced to survive for months without an income because the foreigners registration office won’t issue a work permit? Do you have to submit new documents over and over again until the documents you submitted at the beginning are no longer valid?

According to the administrative law, a so-called “action for failure to act” can be filed after three months if the authority has not decided on the application for a residence permit without sufficient reason. In practice, the foreigners authorities often massively overstretch these legally granted processing periods without being entitled to do so. For some countries, issuing a visa sometimes takes several years, and the foreigners authorities in major cities such as Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Munich also sometimes need so much time to process applications that some residence permits have already expired before they were issued. In order to conceal this official failure, the officials usually react in an extremely unfriendly and abrupt manner.

Applicants do not have to put up with this kind of behaviour. Especially studied professionals are extremely valuable for Germany as a business location and should be treated in this way. For this reason, German law allows several measures against German authorities that confront expats with unbearable administrative burdens. Applicants should make use of their rights in order not to become a victim of unleashed bureaucracy. We will fight your corner!