I knew the process to get permission to work in Germany wasn't going to be a breeze, but I had no idea what I was in store for. Here are all the juicy details (that I still remember) that I can finally share with you!
I knew I wanted to teach English to business professionals as my first job here, so I began applying to language schools in the Stuttgart area about a month before I left the States. Before I arrived in Germany, I had one interview scheduled and they offered me a freelance opportunity at my interview, but they said I needed to get another school to also hire me as a freelancer before I would be able to obtain working permission, since the government wants to be sure you'll be able to support yourself financially. So I continued applying to more schools and within two weeks, I had another letter of intent for freelance work from a second school. That's when I submitted my paperwork at Office #1 on June 4.
Office #1 then added some items regarding my residency in our small village and sent it to Office #2 to be processed. Office #2 said they needed approval from Office #3 to prove that these companies and my freelance contracts were legitimate, so they faxed the information to Office #3 on June 17. For full-time employees (not freelancers), Office #3 has to process these items, but as soon as they saw the application was for freelance work, they shoved it to the side thinking it was sent by mistake (or so we think). So Office #2 (and we) waited for 8 weeks to hear back from Office #3, not knowing they had no intention to process my paperwork.
Along the way, Alfons tried to call Office #2 and Office #3 every week for a status update (since they claimed they didn't speak English when I called). He got more and more frustrated as time passed because one person was on vacation, then another would be out for surgery, then when the first came back from vacation she said she's not the person responsible for my paperwork, etc. The worst part was never knowing if we were even leaving messages on the right answering machines since we got tossed from one person to another. Most of our messages fell on deaf ears and few people returned our calls.
When Alfons reached someone on the phone at Office #3 by accident in early August, the guy checked his system and said my name wasn't even in there. So Alfons called Office #2 and had them fax the paperwork to Office #3 again since it had been "misplaced."
Side note: Most gov't offices here are only open in the mornings and most gov't employees only work two or three days per week since many are stay-at-home moms. That made it even tougher to reach people since their answering machine messages and reply emails did not say their schedules.
On Friday, August 20, Alfons finally reached someone on the phone again at Office #3 who said her office did not need to process the paperwork since it was for a freelancer. He explained to her that Office #2 said Office #3 only had to APPROVE the companies, not PROCESS the paperwork. That's when she realized what was going on and said that their office COULD do that. By the end of the phone conversation, Alfons assumed that she would take care of that approval. WRONG!
Another side note: Americans are allowed to visit Germany for 90 days with no visa. And as long as your paperwork for a visa or residence permit is in process, you can stay beyond that time, but you need a letter from a gov't office stating you are still waiting for your confirmation.
So as my 90th day drew closer and I still had nothing saying I had permission to stay, we decided to go straight to Office #2 on August 23, a day we knew our contact would be there (because we had figured out her schedule by then). The woman was very pleasant and sorry that the process had taken so long. She couldn't believe her office hadn't heard back from Office #3 after Alfons told the woman what she need to do, so our contact at Office #2 started by calling the woman Alfons talked to the previous Friday at Office #3. Thank goodness the woman answered the phone, but when our woman at Office #2 asked for the approval of the companies, the lady said that wasn't her job! She didn't tell Alfons that on Friday! And she didn't tell us we needed to contact someone else to take care of it!
The Office #2 woman in front of us was appalled and asked who she should contact to get the approval asap. The woman on the phone passed her along to another woman at Office #3 and within 90 minutes Office #2 faxed the paperwork to Office #3 (for a third time), Office #3 sent an approval letter back to Office #2, Office #2 printed out my residence permit with permission to work, and we left!
Whew!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment