Hello everyone,

I will describe briefly the situation that I'm in.

I'm a green card holder in Germany for 3 years now. I got married beginning of this month in the my home country, I did all paper work and my wife took 2 appointments in the German embassy, 1 for family reunion visa application and 1 for visit application.

The embassy refused to process the family reunion application since my wife had only basic German knowledge, they however processed the visit visa application but today, after 2 weeks, she got a negative answer and was told that she could not come here anymore unless with family reunion and with sufficient german language knowledge.

What is the level of german language needed here?
Anybody has some more info?

Hi,

Yes they do make lot of troubles in Family reunion cases.

As you are on Green card here, may be you can tell them that you fall under "Highly skilled worker" category and as you know that spouses of "Highly skilled worker" do not need to prove German language skill.

It all depends whether Embassy accepts Green Card as a "Highly skilled worker" or not.Chances are very low but you can give a try.

According to law:

§ 30 Ehegattennachzug

(1) Dem Ehegatten eines Ausländers ist eine Aufenthaltserlaubnis zu erteilen, wenn

1. beide Ehegatten das 18. Lebensjahr vollendet haben,

2. der Ehegatte sich zumindest auf einfache Art in deutscher Sprache verständigen kann



Satz 1 Nr. 1 und 2 ist für die Erteilung der Aufenthaltserlaubnis unbeachtlich, wenn

1. der Ausländer einen Aufenthaltstitel nach den §§ 19 bis 21 besitzt und die Ehe bereits bestand, als er seinen Lebensmittelpunkt in das Bundesgebiet verlegt hat.


Good luck

Thanks for you reply UMTS11.

It would be a big gamble to try what you said and I don't think that it'll work!

I am more interested in knowing the level of german language knowledge that they require.

They must be looking for some minimum, but how is this measured?

Are they looking for a certain level (1,2,3) because we all know that if they're expecting people to be able to start a conversation in german at the embassy, then they must be dreaming.

Here are the infos you are looking for:

"All applicants for family reunion visas have to provide proof that they possess a sufficient basic knowledge of the German language, which is comparable to the “Start Deutsch 1” language certificate of the Goethe Institute".


I hope this will help you.

First of all, congratulations. I hope you come together soon.

If you are turkish, then the turkish authorities were looking for the first such case in order to go to Verfassungsgericht and to EU Court of Human Rights, because this law is discriminating.

Thanks UMTS11, this helps a little but I guess each country will apply the rule as they wish.

Thanks kaan.oezturk, I'm not turkish.

Im sure after this rule these Geothe Institutes would be so much filled that maybe ur spouse get the delayed admission but i hope i would be wrong and u will see ur spouse soon in germany.

Yeah you might be right.

My wife already attended the Grundstufe 1 course at Goethe last year actually so she won't be attending any courses right now.

She even gave the embassy a paper from Goethe mentioning this but they didn't react to it and this is what surprised me even more.

She's working on repeating what she learned back then in order to do the test for G1 soon, and then she'll apply at the embassy again.

We'll see what happens.