From German statistics: "Around 470,000 people of non-German nationality, arriving from nearly 190 countries around the world, live in Berlin's 12 districts. Their share of the total population is about 13%. The share of the population with a migration background is about 25%. The four largest migrant communities are: around 200,000 people with a Turkish migration background; roughly 100,000 people make up 'Russian Berlin' (a figure that includes migrants from successor states of the former Soviet Union, among them Jewish quota refugees and ethnic German resettlers); around 60,000 people came from the former Yugoslavia and its successor states, and around 45,000 are Polish citizens."
Both Berlin's population and our law firm's clients are a multinational bunch — Germans, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Kazakhs, Azerbaijanis, Moldovans, Turks — the list goes on. There's even been an Indian.
Special Cases of Reunification
In certain cases (severe illness, childcare) family reunification is possible even without full compliance with the formal requirements — a well-constructed legal argument plays the decisive role.
A young man from India came to Berlin to study at university. After just one semester, the young man... fell in love with a young woman from Kazakhstan who had come to Germany some years earlier as a late resettler and had obtained German citizenship there. She returned his feelings. Their emotions ran so strong that the young man abandoned his studies altogether. He now had only one goal — to marry the woman he loved and stay by her side forever. But love is love, and life — life in Germany — has its own requirements. As is well known, a student is issued a student visa for their studies, initially valid for one year, which must then be renewed. Our lovestruck young man had completely forgotten about this and only came to his senses when very little time remained before the visa granting him the right to stay in Germany expired. He had practically no grounds for extending it, since he was no longer attending his educational institution and could not obtain the certificate needed to renew the visa.
The young couple came to our law firm with this problem. Having heard out the clients, our attorney, taking the circumstances of the case into account, informed them of the prospects and prerequisites for marrying in Germany, in Denmark, or in the young man's home country. After discussing it, the young couple decided they wanted to marry in Denmark. We gave them a list of the necessary documents and arranged an appointment for the marriage registration. The documents were prepared, and the young couple traveled to Denmark. They returned to Germany already officially married. We informed them of the need to legalize the marriage certificate they had obtained and have it translated into German. We then advised them to apply for family reunification without delay. They brought us the package of documents for the immigration authority. We prepared the application and its supporting grounds and submitted the documents to the immigration authority. Upon receiving the documents, the authority reviewed them and scheduled an appointment for the young couple. They went to the Ausländerbehörde, and the young man was issued a German residence permit valid for one year without unnecessary delay — a year during which the newlyweds could enjoy each other's company in peace.
The couple in love were lucky — thanks to the case being handled correctly by our attorney, the question of the marriage and the young man's residence permit was resolved in literally three weeks. However, such matters are not always resolved so quickly and successfully — the immigration authority may require the person seeking reunification to travel to their country of permanent residence and to resolve the reunification through the German diplomatic mission there. Even in that case, the reunification procedure can drag on for many months without the help of a specialist.
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