I can now clearly feel the peculiarities of German bureaucracy. In the past four months I had to sign an unbelievable amount of slips of paper. For this reason alone, people from the Ukraine are very often at the Dachau district office and at the job center. Because of the language barrier, I am very afraid of filling out a form incorrectly. Despite the fact that I have a university degree in law, it is not easy for me to understand the German processes. It wouldn’t work without the German families and translators who help refugees to understand every single letter from the office.
It all started so well. In the first ten days in Dachau, I received a residence permit and a so-called fictional certificate, valid until September 2022 – and even initial social benefits. Registration went quickly and perfectly. I would like to thank the employees of the district office for this.
The system had crashed, the fingerprints had disappeared
Later things got complicated when it came to getting a residency permit. At the end of April I had to give my fingerprints to the police. It wasn’t until the end of June that I found out that the system had crashed and my fingerprints were gone. I only found out about it because the daughter of my host family wrote a letter to the district office, otherwise we probably would never have found out.
The very next day I went back and had my fingerprints taken again. I had a biometric passport photo taken, filled out a green questionnaire again and thought: Well, the long-awaited moment is coming! Unfortunately, my residence permit was nowhere to be found in the district office – due to the large number of documents in the responsible office. The plastic card, which looks very similar to a German identity card and is used as a substitute for a passport, was officially ready for collection, but unfortunately could not be found. At that point I was really exhausted – but not ready to give up. So a week later I went back to the district office. I didn’t wait for any letter to arrive. I got in line, took a waiting number and – Hallelujah – finally got my ticket.
I understand that there are a particularly large number of Ukrainian refugees here at the moment and that the contact points are overcrowded. That’s why I’m just trying to stay calm and make my way through the German bureaucracy step by step.