Hello friends, my name is Victor.

I see that you are all very knowledgable so my wife and I need your help! Please help us out, the situation is very complicated, so let me try to explain...

Me, my wife, and our son (19 yrs old) moved to Germany. We are all US citizens. My wife and I managed to get jobs, work permits, and residence permits. Our son however wasn't able to. The company that promised to hire him eventually screwed him over.

He was on the 3 month US passport schengen visa. Then after expiration it was extended with a Grenzübertrittsbescheinigung another 3 months, then after that it was extended with a Fiktionsbescheinigung for 3 months. After that, my son provided our case worker a letter from the company that promised to hire him saying that because of the current economic crisis they can't give him the job. Our case worker extended was extremely kind and extended his stay with another Fiktionsbescheinigung for 3 additional months just because of this crisis, saying he wanted to give him another chance because he knows how hard the current job situation is. The case worker was extremely kind to him. Let me clarify again:

-3 Month Schengen Visa through US passport
-3 Month Grenzübertrittsbescheinigung
-3 Month Fiktionsbescheinigung
-Another 3 Month Fiktionsbescheinigung (final extension)

Which means he stayed in Germany 12 months legally. We miss him VERY much, as you can imagine, if you have children. It's already been 6 months since he is outside the Schengen zone, and we really want him back! We want to know when he can come back to us and start the whole process again (job-search). He now already has several job offers but we have no idea when he can re-enter Germany.

My wife and I got very scared by someone telling us on another forum that he probably needs to wait for the whole period that he resided in Germany, which means 12 months. Is this really true??? We get different information from many different sources. There is so much confusion...

-We know a person in another city who was 10 months in Germany and was able to re-enter after being 6 months outside the schengen zone.

-One AB worker (not our case worker) said 6 months outside is "enough" for our son.

-Another AB worker (again not our guy) said he "probably" must wait 12 months. This was a fairly new employee, a new girl who worked there. She seemed very unsure and even admitted she didn't really know.

-Another person said if all 3 of us (the whole family) were in the same situation as our son, then yes we would have to wait 12 months, but because he is our son and we (his parents) have residence permits he can be let in sooner if the beamter wants to allow it.

So much confusion! Next week we are going to OUR case worker, the same guy who extended our son's stay so many times, so we can definitely find out when he can come back to us. But first we want to ask people on this forum on how to best approach this issue with him, and what we can do to speed-up his re-entry if any way possible. Our case worker is now the head of our AB, so maybe that's a good thing.

Do you have any information on this subject, and any advice at all on what we should say when we go to the AB next week? Please, my wife and I will appreciate any input, thank you very much!

The last question we have is this: Is it necessary for someone to go back to the US, or does it just need to be outside the Schengen Area? Our son is legally residing in a country outside the Schengen Zone. Is that okay, or will he have problems because he didn't return to his "homeland" (America)?

Please help us, we miss him alot!

Victor

Hi Victor


well, I guess this kind of questions would be better answered in another forum called "info4alien". This forum was made by people from the ABH (Ausländerbehörde) and they deal with these cases everyday. Regrettably this is an only german languaje forum.

Now, IMHO, I guess if your son came with a tourist visa, he can stay in Germany 3 months each six months. This won´ t help you that much really.

Why don´ t you are a little more "creative" and think in one of this two visums:

1- German languaje study visa: visa allowing him to take a german course. You would only need a 25 hs/week german course, in you local VHS (Volkshochshule). He could be some years in Germany without problems.

2- University studium visa: if he is able to go to any university, he will be allowed to be here as far as he studies.

Both visas must be started in his country via Embassy, take a while but it worths!

So, as said, just my humble opinion.

Good luck!

Hello, thank you for your reply.

We will go this week and talk to the head of our AB. I'll post here what they tell us. If anyone else has any suggestions on how to best approach this issue with our case worker, please tell us.

Victor

This issue has been resolved. The beamter was wrong. He can re-enter after 180 days!

Victor