Megan Lester planned to live and work in Germany. She found a job but was not given the work visa. The 23-year-old from Portland, Oregon (USA) shares her experiences. Guest Commentary.
At the end of June of this year, I was sure I would be returning to Hamburg to start a new career and stay in the city that was starting to feel like home. I had spent the year assisting in an English classroom in Hamburg with the Fulbright program. After the program ended, I decided I wanted to find work outside of teaching, but still use my English bachelor’s degree. Soon I had a job offer to work as a translator for a German software company, and everything seemed to be coming together.
Work visa denied for two reasons
Unfortunately, the translating job fell through. We applied for a work visa, but the Bundesagentur für Arbeit (the Federal Employment Agency), whose approval is required for German employment, denied us for two reasons: first, there are unemployed EU citizens who are also qualified for this job – they are privileged as per the so-called “Vorrangprüfung”. Second, I needed to be paid a higher salary. This is because the Bundesagentur für Arbeit requires that the employment conditions for a non-citizen are no worse than they are for a German citizen. In other words, I needed to earn at least the average salary a German citizen would earn for the same job. This was my first taste of the horror that is German workplace bureaucracy, but it wouldn’t be the last. My boss was really kind and wanted me at his company, so he said we would try again. He would pay me a higher wage, and we would work on the application so the Bundesagentur für Arbeit (BA) would have to accept me. My boss eventually fell ill with a lung infection and was put on bed rest. With him unable to work, I scrambled to find another job and take another shot at getting German employment. This time I was offered a job by an incredibly kind man, who promised he would do his best to help me jump through all of Germany’s work visa hoops. I was confident everything would work out as I left Germany to visit my family in the USA.
I accepted a job in the States
Unfortunately (again), the job fell through. The BA said that there were plenty of native English speakers in the EU who could translate texts for the company. The company could have spent four weeks interviewing candidates sent to them by the BA, and if none of the candidates were acceptable, I could continue trying to acquire a position with the company. At this point I was 5,000 miles away from Hamburg, and spending months trying to get a job that I had no guarantee of actually acquiring felt pretty hopeless. I ended up accepting a job in the Sates, and decided to just visit Hamburg whenever I could.
Looking back, I greatly underestimated the difficulty in acquiring a German work visa as a non-EU citizen. Call it my American optimism, but I really believed once I had a job offer and a contract, it would be smooth bureaucratic sailing. What I didn’t know was that the real work begins after you have the contract. I also greatly underestimated how much I had come to appreciate Hamburg—a city I, unfortunately, can’t call home. The people I have met here are kind, open-minded, caring, funny, and good. They have helped me overturn so many misconceptions and assumptions I had about Germany when I arrived here one year ago. Maybe I will try to get a German work visa again in the future, this time with a more structured and thought-out plan—the German way.
Also in our blog: Naked greetings in the sauna, a bakery on every corner, and – ha – German buses do run late: Read about Megan Lesters other experiences in Germany in a previous Employland-interview. Interested in more? A renowned faculty for Engineering, an extensive job application process, and living the Indian way in Eastern Germany: Dinesh Kumar Kodavali from India shares his experiences of living and studying in Germany. You want more? Beer is cheaper than water, people are coconuts, and don’t expect to practice your language skills – that’s what Mikayla Posey learned during her stay as an English teaching assistant in Germany, she shares all that in our blog.