POV: your visa expires soon and you need to call Ausländerbehörde for an appointment

POV: your visa expires soon and you need to call Ausländerbehörde for an appointment from germany

46 comments

  1. because they won’t read your emails and won’t accept visitors without appointment

    Edit: I would like to point out that there are visible changes made in Darmstadt in recent months ([like recently moving to a bigger more modern place](https://www.rheinmainverlag.de/2022/03/02/35759/), [hired temps to relief the queue](https://www.hessenschau.de/gesellschaft/keine-spuerbaren-verbesserungen-bei-darmstaedter-auslaenderbehoerde—stadt-bittet-um-geduld,auslaenderbehoerde_darmstadt-100.html), even [politics](https://www.hessenschau.de/politik/neue-darmstaedter-koalition-will-buergermeister-abwaehlen,darmstadt-abwahl-buergermeister-100.html)), but all seems for
    naught and still not enough is being done to address the actual needs of 30k foreigners ([20% of Darmstadt’s population](https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1186768/umfrage/auslaenderanteil-kreise-metropolregion-frankfurt-rhein-main/)) who live here.

    I should probably also point out that an emerging refugee crisis in Ukraine is not helping the situation at all. Thank you everyone for your kind comments and suggestions, I will post updates if I’ve made any progress with my own situation.

  6. Thanks. This is giving me anxiety… and I’m a German citizen.
    *I guess I’m just scared of phone calls in general.*

  7. We never had this kind of issues in Hamburg. We sent our documents as per their timeline (6-8 weeks on advance) and they always replied, gave us the appointments for payment/review and pick-up. This was in summer last year. I guess we were lucky.

  10. Dresden amt is so great! Never had any problem so far, everyone was super friendly and ready to navigate complicated situation (missing documents, ect)

  11. In Bavaria i just send them a certified letter asking for an appointment for the next available date. They responded in about 4 weeks(lol), but with an appointment date.

  12. It’s honestly ridiculous. I’m a German citizen living in Portugal and i had to renew my Passport and Ausweis and to get an appointment at the German embassy in Lisbon, it took me over 3 months of checking every day until I got a slot that was for two weeks after i booked it.

  15. My Worst was with O2 47 minutes just for someone to answer the phone and hang up instantly. But once I had to wait 32 minutes on 112 in Wien.

  18. My ausländerbehörde is very responsive by email here in Freiburg. Always respond within a day or two. However, they are way behind. I’ve finally got an appointment turn in photos and to pay for my Aufenthaltstitel, current one expired in November 2021… I can get the card after another month.

  20. I’ve since fled for the Netherlands, where the IND (Dutch ABH) makes appointments through an online portal. Also, renewing residence permits can be done by mailing in an application with a photo (no visit to an office necessary – because that’d be super inefficient and a waste of time).

    I will not move to Germany again as a non-EU citizen. There’s a decent chance I’ll end up with Dutch nationality, and then I’d be happy to come back. But the ausländerbehörde was so bad, I’m never willing to deal with it again.

    The first ausländerbehörde I went to required that I make an appointment for 3 months later (so well past when visa free status would run out), and appointments could only be made in person (so they could verify my identity). Those two requirements literally made it impossible to get a residence permit. Add onto that, they required I bring my previous residence permit in to replace it. When I told them that I didn’t have another residence permit since this was my first one, they told me that was my problem and to make sure I brought back a residence permit.

    I moved. I literally moved to a different kreis so I didn’t have to deal with that ausländerbehörde. The one in the new kreis was possible, but still as painful as possible. By contrast, the dutch one was so low stress, I thought I had fucked up because of how I was conditioned in Germany.

  21. Do you have the email address of your Ausländeramt? I am doing entrance control for the one in my town and an advise I always give is (while giving them the contact card): “try calling them for your appointment. If they don’t answer the call write them an e-mail with your name in it, what’s the problem you are having and untill when (date of visa expiring in your case) it needs to be fixed. Or write all of that down in an physical letter and throw it in the letter box here or give it to us directly, since it will be in our hands in either case and we give it to the Amt then”

    But yeah, german public offices in a nutshell, sadly.

  25. donno where you are in germany but we never called. we get appointments online in their reservation system. it has never been easier.

  26. Haha, so true. My niece was in Germany for 1,5 years without a valid visa because our Ordnungsamt had closed down during lockdown and when it opened again, we got an appointment several months into the future.

  29. at least here you have a phone number.

    Try to contact the auslanderbehörde in Potsdam mittelmarkt.

    Before the pandemie , 1 day 25 tickets or cases taken. Not possible to arrenge a meeting via phone or email. People sleeping over or next to the building to get on the line for those 25 tickets.

  30. I had this problem too and looked up the email for the people in my Ausländerbehörde and emailed for an appointment and got it quick

  31. Fax is actually the sneaky supermove !

    I have an app for it.

    Oh, you usually also can send SMS to modern phones, has a nice panic Effekt on government agencies xP

    They just see they have 8 unheard messages on their phone, which turn out to be robotic text to speech messages.

    They will have to listen to that several times most likely to get all the details.

    No, I am not evil, I swear !

  32. They should provide anxiety medicine prescriptions with visa to all the foreigners. At some point, we are gonna need it as a foreigner here 😅

  38. Watched closely towards the very end hoping you’d hold the line. A piece of me died when you didn’t…

  39. Is this Darmstadt?

    They are famous for being the lousiest Ausländerbehörde in all of Schland.

  41. Auto redial?? Why didn’t I hear of this sorcery sooner? If this standards out do I need some fancy all for this?

  42. Is it really that bad? I have a student visa expiring in a month or so, should I be seriously concerned that I won’t even be able to get an appointment?

  44. I saw the title and immediately thought, this has to be Darmstadt!
    I called today too like 1 hour before you. After 11 calls they did answer! But the last time it took me over 300 tries 😂

  45. In Magdeburg they don’t offer ab English speaking employees so that at my job Germans have to come with the foreigners

  46. Just a note on how telephone systems work: when the line is busy, that’s it. You will not achieve anything by waiting, and you will not be patched through just because the other end is free again.

    If the line is busy, hang up, redial.

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