Hello, 

I am an unlucky person like most of you.

It has been 14+ weeks since my family (wife and child) applied for visa at the Kolkata Consulate. The case is still pending and ABH is making it more and more complicated day by day. I need some assisitance and/or advice from those who have some knowledge/experience in this regard. By the way, my daughter's case is clean because she has a Dutch birth certificate and the Germans accept it.

Here is the timeline:
28 October 2014: Applicaition was submitted at Kolkata Consulate

05 December 2014: Lawyer visited for the verification of marriage certificate

Date unknown: Kolkata Consulate sent the verification report to ABH

Date unknown: ABH sent the report to the Civil Registry Office

Dates unknown: There has been some exchange of letters between ABH and Civil Registry Office

28 January 2015: I received a letter from ABH to submit the following documents, in order for the Civil Regitry Office to review the effectiveness of my marriage certificate for the German rights.
- Respective original birth certificate with German translation (may need to be legalized or verified),
- Respective submission of a copy of the passport as proof of nationality,
- Proof of marital status at the time of marriage (possibly no longer be procured, then affidavit),
- Proof of residence in the form of a declaration or certificate of residence.

05 February 2015: I submitted these documents for both myself and my wife with German translations at the Civil Registry Office, as instructed in the letter.
Now they are saying, everything look good. But the birth certificates are only certified by the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Germany does not accept these documens. So they may need these birth certifiates to be verified first. 

05 February 2015: I wrote an email to Kolkata Consulate with a description of what happened.
In reply, they just said without the consent of ABH they cannot grant a visa and they advised me to talk to ABH about this. I am a scientist and my German language proficieny is very very poor. With the help of a German colleague, I tried to discuss with them. But it has all failed.

My marriage was done in an Indian court in 2009 as per the Section 13 of Special Marriage Act. It has been verified by the Kolkata Consulate.

Can someone educate me what is the need to assess the effectiveness of the certificate for German rights? Is it really necessary? I have a feeling that the ABH Officer dealing with our case does not know the law and doing these unnecessary checks. Is there an alternative way to prevent the verification of birth certificates of myself and my wife.

I am in Germany with my birth certificate and my wife+daugher are in India with their documents. Not sure how are they are going to do this and how long the procedure will take. Both myself and the Kolkata Consurate are not informed on the decision of the ABH and Civil Registry Office.

Many thanks for your kind advise and help.




 

Hi

So sorry about your case, but its very very normal... even we waited for 5 months for getting family reunion visa.

In our case marriage certificate need to be certified by civil office, So i have gone to civil office and paid 350 euros, so that they will be taking help from Embassies in india to certify the document. iam not very sure about your case but might be you have to follow the same procedure.

All the Best

Regards
Bhanu

Hi Bhanu,

Thank you for your reply. In fact, my marriage certificate has been verified by the Kolkata Consulate. The fee for this process (INR18,000) was paid at the same time when my wife submitted her visa application.

What I don't understand is:
- the necessity to review the effectiveness of my marriage certificate for the German rights 
- the reason why they are not believing the marriage verification report from the Kolkata Consulate.
- the reason why they need to verify the birth certificate, when all the details of the birth certificate (date of birth, place of birth and names of parents) are included in the passport. 

Many thanks again.

Hi

I Completely agree with all... But if they told some thing we can avoid it... It would be better to intiate the prcess to avoid unnecessary delays.
I Really dont understand some times what they want, My Residence permit application was there with them from past 2 months every time they say it was under process. The same was approved in labour office 1.5 months back. But who can ask them......
We have to bear or hire a lawyer....
But at the end of the pain of separating out from family... God only Knows...
I heard that we can give declaration to ABH that they can deport if the documents found wrong and they can approved the visa application. (After intiating document verification), But it was not worked for me and you can try it....

Hi Bhanu,

Thanks again for sharing your experience. 

I asked the Civil Registry Office about the possibility of a declaration or undertaking from me that my family shoud be granted a visa, while any further investigation are being carried out and we may be deported or sent to prison if our documents are proved to be fake. The guy said he has no idea if it is possible.

But I have not aked the ABH about it, which I will do next week.
 

I am glad to post an update here that the visa application of my wife and daughter are now approved. They did not create any further trouble to us. Thank God!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank bhanukiran who shared his experience and advice. Thank you Bhanu! I also would like to thank all those who viewed/read my post.

We have lived in the Netherlands and UK before and in both cases we got our visa within 2 weeks without the need of the stupid verification things. So this was the worst visa experience for us.

I wish good luck to all who are going through this pain, which is very unbearable. Patience is the key word when it comes to a German Family Visa. But we are humans made of flesh and blood and we don't have unlimited patience. They call it ''Family Reunion Visa'' - means they break our family and and we beg them to reunite us, which they eventually do in their own way and they take their time. God!!!

Hi

Iam very happy to know that visa is finally approved... Congrats...