Hello all,

Since I am from India, I have to make an application for residence permit from my home country. The process can take a while (upto 3 months) mainly due to the step below:

"The Embassy in home country passes the application to the immigration office (the Auslaenderbehoerde) in the place where the job is to take place for initial approval. The immigration office, in cooperation with the local employment office (the Arbeitsamt) that issues the permission, makes its decision."

I heard from the consulate in India that my future employer can get a pre-approval. That is, get the above step done even before I make an application. I can then attach this to my application and the process will be faster.

Would appreciate if anyone can share information in this regard?

The employer can apply for workpermit with ABH, which inturn gets in touch with Arbeitsamt. The ABH would fax its approval to the consulate.

At the same time, I submitted my application from India. The preapproval was granted and I checked from the consulate. Before my application could have been forwarded, I got my visa.

I tried get this pre-approval from my employer, they told me it was sent to consulate.

Hope this helps

Thanks stutt. This really helps.

How much time it took for you after you started the process to get the Visa?

The residence permit has a question called "Do you have consent from "Auslaenderbehoerde"?". I plan to ask my employer to do this and attach the consent letter with my application. Hope this makes the process faster

I had got pre-approval from ausländerbehörde once, when I was in Germany on Business visa. My employer wanted me to come back to Germany again immediately after the 3-months term. They applied for workpermit and got approved within 2-3 weeks.
Then ausländerbehörde isued pre-approval for residence permit and gave it in my hand. I went back to India, and applied for residence permit with this pre-approval letter, and got the visa stamped in 3 days just like business visa.

But it all depends on the ausländerbehörde and the relation between employer and ausländerbehörde. Ausländerbehörde at this city is famous for giving pre-approvals even for spouse visas.

Vinod.

In total it took 20 days from the day employer submitted till the day I got my visa stamped.

It all depends on the work permit. WP takes about 2 months in extreme case.

Good luck with your visa.

Thanks for all the information. Few more questions. Would really appreciate your feedback.

1. Does the pre-approval processing require you to send your documents to your employer (via postal mail)

2. Is the pre-approval process possible only when you are travelling alone (that is, your family is not accompanying you)

1) You can scan your documents into pdf and then send it by email. This way you can spead it up.

2) Pre-approval is possible for employer-sponsored work permit. I am not sure whether you could get pre-approval in family reunification case while you are in India.