Dear All,

Its been a great help seeing this site to overcome day to day issues. Hats off to the site..

BTW i recently moved to Germany & i live in Duisburg for couple of months now.

I have got a work permit stamped for an year & now i want to apply visas to bring my spouse & son here.

Can Anybody tell how long is it taking to get the Spouse visa offlate & has anybody got it very recently... Can also share if any cutshorts can be done to reduce the time frame?

I went through some of the forums in the topic & was surprised to see that i need to stay here for min 5 years to get my spouse in?? & another forum said within 3 weeks it can be done.

So i am in a dilemma to whether bring my family here on residence permit or by visitors visa.

Will be of much help if anyone can guide me on this.

Thanks
Anuop

I brought my family after 6 months.
If you were married before getting here than no problem. Only those married after could have problems but rarely.
It is called Familienzusammenführung.

It should be normally no problem but the process time depends on your country of origin. German authorities have a list called "Problem Staaten" (Problematic countries) where corruption is daily practice and where it is easy to get falsified documents.. so if you happen to come from such a country.. the process time of the German Consulate might be longer.. otherwise it shouldnt be longer than 3 weeks, provided that you present them all required documents..

Regards,

Lacrima


PS: If you bring them with visitor's visa then they have to go back again.. you have to choose the correct visa type from the very beginning so that they can convert it here to residence permit. German Consulates dont issue residence permits anyway, they only issue visas for specific purposes.

Thanks Lacrima & DvD for your suggestions. Really helpful

regards
Anoup

@anoup

one more thing is at the time of providing your docs to the Auslaender Behoerde, make sure that you have a working contract for atleast 6 more months. or atleast get a letter from your employer in this regard. also remember that this letter should be not older than 2 weeks incase you have to get one.

@anoup:

If you provide ALL the papers as required by the German consulate of your country, you will get it in 3-4 weeks. That was my experience in India.

Refer:
http://trust7faq.wiki.com/Visa#Spouse_Visa_.2F_Dependent_Visa