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Vibgyor5 | 3 years ago

Just wanted to mention out there that this is one of the topmost reasons why I left Germany (and moved back to Asia).

- Lack of political will to fix the bureaucratic mess: I had to come to Immigration Office standing in the queue at 3-4am due to lack of appointment slots online.

- One of the biggest companies in Germany didn't know how to move my employment permit from Berlin to Hamburg. No complicated case even! I was on visa, single, residence tied in Berlin and for 4 weeks their HR and Immigration partner kept deliberating on where/how the application should proceed. I worked at small startups as well as some big ones and I felt a major lack of empathy for foreign workers among German/European colleagues who never had to deal with such paperwork.

- I felt tons of virtue signalling here but minimal support for once you were in the country. Eg. Poland had had Immigration Advisory Centers you could call and seek advice on your case for free, in multiple languages incl. English. Poland! - the country "infamous" for not being very foreigner-friendly. Zero such support in Immigration Center (Auslandsamt) in Germany with silly argument of "we can't speak in English even though we work in an office where we must interact with foreigners every day because what if legal repurcussions?"

Long story short, it left a poor taste and I chose to leave.

Turned out for the better but just wanted to point out: I still believe that problem is not just collecting information (there are sites like allaboutberlin that are good at it) but handholding/support (like Jobbatical/Localyze are doing and some lobbying/support to the govt. to fix the bureaucracy that is living 20 years back in time.

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