When immigrating to a new country to live of course a key component is making sure you are allowed to be there!
Nordine is an EU Citizen so there has never been a problem for her to live in Germany. For me there has always been a problem. Despite family heritage, a father born in Germany, ample means of financial support and no criminal record - getting a foot in the door in Germany was always a problem. My birth 'right' as the son of a German born father ceased because he became an Australian citizen long before I was born.
The family had other things on their minds in those days other than some not-yet-born-child's bohemian retirement back to the Fatherland 50 something years later.
For years I focused on trying to get a German passport. I read all I could and contacted the German embassies in Australia many times. Rules often change, but they never did in my favour. The answer was always no.
Eventually I had to abandon the idea of getting a passport. I started looking into long term visas and these all looked problematic too. I was too old for a working holiday visa, and that is just one year long anyway. Pfftt, too short! Although I am heaps clever and stuff, I don't possess any skills that Germany wants, so I am not really eligible for the skilled migrant deal. Although I am also heaps artistic, I have no portfolio worth showing and have never derived an income from art. No artists or freelancer visa for me.
So after all the researching we had to abandon the idea that we could live in Germany the way we wanted. Being married to a Dutch citizen we started to make enquiries about living in Holland on a spouse type visa. This was possible so we started making plans for Holland. Reading through the Dutch information it struck me that they always refer to EU nationals in the rules, not a 'Dutch Citizen' specifically.
So If I could be allowed to be in Holland as the spouse of an 'EU Citizen' maybe this also applied to Germany. I did some more research and found out this was the case, the spouse didn't need to be a German Citizen, just an 'EU-Burger' as they say. Okay! Germany was back on the menu.
I immediately set about organising a visa from Australia. I was told I could do it once I got to Germany, but I wanted certainty before we left. We were after all quitting our jobs, renting our place out, taking the dog with us and planning to settle in Germany big time. I made all the necessary applications and was speedily issued with just a three month temporary visa. This was a bit disappointing. 'Just go to the office in Germany when you get there, they will extend it for you no problem' they told me.
Nordine is an EU Citizen so there has never been a problem for her to live in Germany. For me there has always been a problem. Despite family heritage, a father born in Germany, ample means of financial support and no criminal record - getting a foot in the door in Germany was always a problem. My birth 'right' as the son of a German born father ceased because he became an Australian citizen long before I was born.
The family had other things on their minds in those days other than some not-yet-born-child's bohemian retirement back to the Fatherland 50 something years later.
For years I focused on trying to get a German passport. I read all I could and contacted the German embassies in Australia many times. Rules often change, but they never did in my favour. The answer was always no.
Eventually I had to abandon the idea of getting a passport. I started looking into long term visas and these all looked problematic too. I was too old for a working holiday visa, and that is just one year long anyway. Pfftt, too short! Although I am heaps clever and stuff, I don't possess any skills that Germany wants, so I am not really eligible for the skilled migrant deal. Although I am also heaps artistic, I have no portfolio worth showing and have never derived an income from art. No artists or freelancer visa for me.
So after all the researching we had to abandon the idea that we could live in Germany the way we wanted. Being married to a Dutch citizen we started to make enquiries about living in Holland on a spouse type visa. This was possible so we started making plans for Holland. Reading through the Dutch information it struck me that they always refer to EU nationals in the rules, not a 'Dutch Citizen' specifically.
So If I could be allowed to be in Holland as the spouse of an 'EU Citizen' maybe this also applied to Germany. I did some more research and found out this was the case, the spouse didn't need to be a German Citizen, just an 'EU-Burger' as they say. Okay! Germany was back on the menu.
I immediately set about organising a visa from Australia. I was told I could do it once I got to Germany, but I wanted certainty before we left. We were after all quitting our jobs, renting our place out, taking the dog with us and planning to settle in Germany big time. I made all the necessary applications and was speedily issued with just a three month temporary visa. This was a bit disappointing. 'Just go to the office in Germany when you get there, they will extend it for you no problem' they told me.
The first failed attempt to get an extension at the Ausländerbehörde (Aliens Authority) is detailed here .
After this attempt we didn't want to waste any more time lining up so we made an appointment, the earliest being 19 March. We spent the next couple of months living our Berlin lives and concurrently emailing the office trying to sort out what I should bring with me to the appointment.
Through one of these emails they dropped a bit of a bomb - I was going to need health insurance. I was told in Australia that this wasn't a requirement for my situation and so we were going to just keep our travel insurance going to look after ourselves. Through emails with the Berlin authority I was told that travel insurance is not acceptable, I would have to get 'proper' insurance.
Getting German Health Insurance (krankenversicherung) might not seem like a big thing and didn't dawn on me initially, but the more we looked into it the bigger the issue became. We were starting to panic as our appointment date approached and we were realising our insurance options were limited.
To tell the whole story is long, boring and frustrating - and here I go in a slightly summarised way. There are three insurance options in Germany. The state system, the German private system and a very limited selection of international insurance options. I can't get state insurance because I don't have a visa, Nordine can't get state insurance because she is an EU Citizen but has never had European insurance (as an adult), we can't get insurance because we do not have jobs, we can't get insurance because we are not on social welfare (it was suggested we sign up), we may not be eligible for private insurance because we don't earn enough money to be in that system, if we were accepted into the private system the premiums are too high for us to consider (hello - 500 to 1,000 Euros...A MONTH!), and finally, the international insurance is expensive for FA cover, but one of them would apparently fill the visa requirement.
We visited a couple of state insurers in person and were denied because I had no visa. One company provided me with a printout which showed they could not legally insure me unless I had a visa for more than 12 months. They said that I could take the printout to my visa appointment and 'sometimes' it seems to do the trick.
The other state insurer said they would accept my application and provide me a letter to take to the visa office which would state that I had made an application and that it was conditional on my visa being granted. We thought this was a near sure fire option and after thinking about it for a couple of days we went back to the office to complete the paperwork. We made sure we had the same person again so that the story and 'slightly under the table' application could be done. It was harder than expected to get the same person, and when we finally did she reneged on what she said she would do. This was extremely disappointing.
I have also been dealing with some insurance brokers and they all told me what a nightmare this system is. We had quotes for the private insurance but couldn't justify the expense. Our only 'in the hand' option was the crappy expensive international cover that we probably would never use. We weren't happy with that.
My visa appointment was coming up in two weeks time and we didn't want to stuff it up and considered the international insurance. On the other hand we didn't want to be forced into the inferior insurance option just for the sake of 'ticking a box'.
We decided we would try lining up again at the Ausländerbehörde (Aliens Authority) and try to get an unscheduled appointment, or at least talk to someone face to face about our options. We had the letter that one of the state insurers had given to me and we hoped to discuss this in particular with someone. We gathered all of our documents and prepared our financial information just in case. Hopefully we would get some clarity and not stuff up our scheduled appointment.
Continued in Part 2.
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