Once, enthusiastic romantics dreamed of a day when universities would disappear entirely. Students would no longer have to leave their homes to get an education. When VCRs appeared, the idea of distance learning based on swapping videotapes came along with them. But the truly ambitious dreamers pictured videophones, so everyone could sit in an unmade bed and get educated without looking up from their bacon and eggs. Then the internet's mass takeover of the planet gave humanity something none of those progressives could have dreamed of. Not just the university with its departments became unnecessary — an entire class of university professors became unnecessary. Now everyone can be a professor and a student at the same time. And since learning is supposed to be "fun," everything has to be lively, snappy, and, above all, very short.
A joke about this made the rounds. Dorothy asks the Scarecrow,
Overturning BVA Refusals
A refusal by the Bundesverwaltungsamt (BVA) to recognize late resettler status can be challenged before the administrative court — typically within one month of receiving the refusal.
- Do you really have no brain?! Then how can you talk?!
- I even run webinars!
But even webinars are a thing of the past now — far too long-winded. The real thing these days is a lifehack, where a one-minute video will teach you, at most, everything you need to know. Our client decided to become a late resettler by consulting the internet. It all seemed as simple as could be. But something did set our client apart from the Scarecrow. Perhaps having an actual brain?
The Forum Is Crying Out for You
Viktor Vogel was born and raised in Kazakhstan. His father came from the Volga Germans. After the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued its decree "On the Resettlement of the Germans Living in the Volga Region" on 28 August 1941, the Volga German Autonomous Republic was abolished and its German population was subjected to total deportation. To that end, NKVD troops had already been brought into the Volga German ASSR beforehand (according to the recollections of its residents, as early as 26 August). The Germans were ordered to prepare for resettlement within 24 hours and report to collection points with a limited amount of belongings. The republic's German residents were transported to remote areas of Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia. Under this decree, 446,480 Soviet Germans were deported in September–October 1941 (other sources put the figure at 438,280). Viktor's father did not escape the bitter fate of ethnic Germans and was deported to Kazakhstan. Viktor's mother came from a well-to-do family of exiled Ukrainians, who likewise found herself, through no choice of her own, far from the steppes and bluffs of the great Dnieper.
Viktor came of age during years of upheaval for the Soviet Union — the period of its collapse. The building of communism gave way to cartoons in the communist press mocking the horrors of capitalism. On one hand, Freedom was waving from a distance; on the other, the boot of poverty and unemployment was landing squarely on people's backsides. Viktor's father decided it was time to move to the homeland of his ancestors. They filed an application. They waited. They waited some more. And they were refused — with no explanation given. At the time, that decision put an end to any further attempts to set foot on the sacred soil of Barbarossa.
Viktor trained for a profession, got married, had children. He ran his own business. But then pagers gave way to mobile phones, and Viktor's business came to an end. He went to work for a company selling Korean cars. For a while things went more than fine, but then another crisis hit. Oil prices fell. Demand for new cars fell right after. His salary shrank by twenty percent, then by half. He had to start driving a private taxi at night just to keep his family fed. On one of his night runs to the airport, Viktor picked up a former classmate as a passenger. That classmate had moved to Germany with his family back in '93 and had now flown in to visit relatives. His old friend asked Viktor why on earth he was still in Kazakhstan.
As they drove back from the airport, Viktor's mind kept drifting between road signs and images of a distant, magical Germany. It turned out that in June 2013 the Bundestag had passed a bill amending the Law on Late Resettler Status (Bundesvertriebenengesetz, Bundestag-Drucksache 17/13937 of 12 June 2013). And now Germany was once again telling Viktor: "Willkommen!"
After saying goodbye to his classmate, Viktor finished his shift. At home, barely kicking off his shoes, he sat down at the computer looking for a forum with everything he needed for his move to Germany.
Was everything going to be fine?
Indeed, with the new law in place, everything looked considerably simpler than under the earlier requirements.
As before, the applicant still had to be descended from an ethnic German or a German citizen — and Viktor had that. But the requirement that the applicant declare themselves ethnically German from the very start — that is, when receiving their first passport at age 16 — had disappeared. Under the amended law, people who, because of the consequences of the war and less than "friendly" attitudes toward ethnic Germans, had chosen a "non-German" parental nationality on their first passport were now permitted to change their registered nationality to "German," through the courts or the civil registry office, based on their German parent. In short, taking into account the bitter consequences the war had had for Soviet Germans, the legislature had made it possible for descendants of ethnic Germans to identify as German, amend their civil status documents on that basis, and apply for "late resettler" status.
There was no longer any need to prove that German had been passed down within the family. There was no need to speak any particular dialect. A certificate of German proficiency at level B1 was now enough. And Viktor didn't speak any dialect. Most importantly, the new law also made a concession regarding the reopening of cases that had already been closed due to a refusal: reopening admission proceedings was no longer subject to any time limit. Viktor found hope, wings, and a fire in his belly. On the next forum, people were sharing the details of getting through the bureaucratic procedures — everything was there, right down to sample application forms. In his mind, Viktor was already selling cars in Germany. His family signed up for language courses. Viktor set about having his documents translated and notarized. The hours ticked away toward happiness. And then, just as everything was ready to be taken to the embassy, that fire in Viktor's belly seemed to sputter out. Doubts crept in. Viktor searched Google for stories of refusals and found out that it wasn't all quite so straightforward. Viktor decided to back his position with an attorney in Germany and turned to our law firm.
Everything was going to be fine!
Once our attorney received the documents Viktor had planned to send to the embassy, it became clear that he was still working nights as a taxi driver in Kazakhstan. Nowhere in his documents was he listed as German. What Viktor had picked up from reading forums — that there was no need for a record of German ethnicity simply because his father's documents contained one — turned out to be less optimistic than he'd hoped. The new law does allow people with a non-German nationality entry to apply for late resettler status, but in that case they must prove their connection to the German nation through fluency in one of the dialects spoken — or, one might soon have to say, once spoken — by the so-called Russian Germans. Viktor spoke no such dialect. And that interview procedure with a specialist at the embassy is not a pleasant one, nor is the likelihood of passing it particularly high.
So Viktor once again set about gathering and correctly preparing his documents — this time under the guidance of an experienced attorney from our firm. To avoid a procedure doomed from the start — proving that German had been passed down within the family — it was necessary to go through the courts to have Viktor's birth certificate amended in the "Nationality" field. Our attorneys' experience allows them to work competently with both Russian and Kazakh law, so Viktor had no need to bring in Kazakh lawyers as well. The applications and references to statutory provisions our attorney prepared allowed him to amend his birth certificate without any obstacles. And the archival inquiries our attorney made on his behalf turned up enough evidence of the repression suffered by Viktor's ancestors.
Over roughly three months, Viktor successfully passed the language exam at level B1, and his wife obtained a certificate at level A1. The children, given their age, were exempted from the language exam. Once all the necessary, correctly prepared documents had been gathered and the application had been filled out on Viktor's behalf, our attorney submitted the full set of documents to the resettlement authority, and two months later Viktor's family was in our law firm's offices in Berlin, offering their thanks.
What would have happened if the voice of reason hadn't woken up from under the rubble of internet optimism and pushed its way through? The answer to that is fairly predictable. An attorney's experience and knowledge cannot be replaced by the democratic exercise of sharing opinions on various forums. That would be like removing your own appendix while saying, "OK Google!"
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