Tag Archives: Migration

Immigration to Germany

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This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Authorities

Recommendation: Employers should be proactive in relocating employees to Germany and should initiate the process as soon as possible to not cause unwanted delays. Due to a lack of resources in the German Immigration authorities authorities and an unexpected high volume of resident/work permit applications the current adjudication times are between 8 and 12 weeks.

The problems include the inability of offering appointments on short notice or answering phone calls relating to applications. Especially affected are complex application which require special consultations and often additional training for staff. In order to address the current capacity problems new people are hired, nevertheless regularizing the lack of resources will take some time as the new staff needs specific and adequate training as well as job experience.

Immigration will remain unchanged for companies, which relocate employees to Germany, however guidance cannot be provided by the authorities to do so at the moment. Further additional requests by the authorities asking for provision of additional documents could be experienced by foreigners and their employers. Additionally, inquiries in relation to qualifications, salary rates, benefits and employment conditions could be requested.

 

Relocation and Digitalization for migration?

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Relocation is a long and well-known but costly thing. It is more a service offered to highly settled managers and high-end salary earners than a service for average earners. Furthermore, it became dramatically complicated and unclear due to increased digitalization and more and more websites providing information.
How can relocation get clearer again? And how could the process of digitalization be used to increase proficiency of relocation, to facilitate migration from one country/city to another country/city and how could we make relocation available for average earners and the broad population?
Nowadays the main problem is that every city itself provides a bulk of information on its city website, however most of the time in the country’s language only, or without related links or further information regarding specific documents or specific steps one has to take. Not everyone can effort to engage private relocation services and those people have to wander alone through the jungle of different websites, languages and chaotic documents to get the information they need to organize their migration.
The new idea is to combine relocation services with digitalization in such a manner to make it easy and affordable for the vast majority of people moving from one country to another. Online-Portals such as gohelpy provide all the information you need in multiple languages, and most importantly: on one platform! You do not need to search multiple websites or research for hours the specific documents you need for e.g. a renting contract or your registration with the municipality. Those portals provide all information, steps and documents you need and adapt it to your desires and circumstances! Those portals digitalize the old relocation service and develops it further on to another level: away from an upper class, top-salary earner service to a service for everyone!
Try it out now!

How useful are opendays, career fairs and Co?

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In nearly every month and in every bigger city multiple career days, career fairs. open days at universities or trade fairs about different universities take place. How useful are those trade fairs and open days? Does it make sense to visit such events?
YES!
Of course you do not need to visit every career or study fair, and of course attending every University openday is not even down-to-earth, but to get an overview of todays possibilities, opendays and career fairs are the way to go.

Today there are so many different Bachelor and Master studies, most of them you do not even know now and cannot imagine that those studies exist. Fairs of the different Universities or study programmes provide a good overview of what is possible. Get inspired by those fairs! It might happen that you find a study programme meeting all your desires but is relatively unknown, wherefore you have not heard about yet.
Similarly, career fairs: You are done with you studies but not sure where to head to? Get inspired by the vast range of possible jobs. Make good contacts and expand your network at those events.
And once you found interesting study programmes or traineeships you can visit the opendays of the universities/study programmes and traineeships you are interested in. Most of the time these specific events provide more into-depth information and easier opportunities to network.

Therefore, take your chance and visit one or two or more of the many career, job and uni fairs in Germany to get inspired and kickstart your career!
We listed some of the upcoming events in Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart, Cologne and Co.

  • Berlin: Connecticum (25.04-27.04.2017), Studyworld 2017 (12./13.05.2017)
  • Hamburg: Talente kompakt (27.04.2017)
  • Stuttgart: Stuzubi (29.04.2017)
  • Köln: meet@th-koeln (03.05. & 04.05.2017)
  • Düsseldorf: Master and more / Bachelor and more (05.05. & 06.05.2017)
  • Frankfurt: Jobmesse Einstieg (21./22.04.2017)

Fibo 2017

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This weekend in Cologne: The world’s largest trade fair for fitness & health takes place in Cologne and will open its doors for private visitors on Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
More than 940 exhibitors will show the newest trends and innovation for fitness and a healthy lifestyle. Additionally, to the newest products and trends an extensive interactive programme is offered to the more than 153,000 visitors.

You can find products reaching from training clothes over training equipment and mobile devices to healthy nutrition and cosmetics.

 

Top Ten Fun Facts Cologne

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This entry is part 6 of 8 in the series TOP TEN
  1. Expensive – Building Cologne Cathedral today again would cost more than 10 billion Euro
  2. Heavily romantic – many couples put padlocks on the Hohenzollernbrücke as a sign of their eternal love. All padlocks together weigh about 15 tons.
  3. The Airport Köln/Bonn is the one of only few emergency landing spot for NASA space shuttles.
  4. long-lasting – Building Cologne Cathedral took 623 years. Today it is the third largest cathedral in the world.
  5. cheers – Kölsch is the city’s traditional beer: sweeter than usual beer and served in very small glasses, it contains the same percentage of alcohol as other beers.
  6. special feelings – No other city in Germany loves and celebrates itself as much as Cologne does:
    • several songs about the city and their love to the city
    • Kölsch beer
    • the relationship of FC Köln and its fans is unique and very tight (Prinz Poldi)
  7. The Catholic Church has bestowed upon Cologne the title of “holy city”. Only Rome and Constantinople (today Istanbul) possess this title as well.
  8. Underneath the University of Cologne a 215 m long old mine tunnel including an mining lift exists.
  9. Cologne was the first German city to introduce a waste collection system using closed containers.
  10. bad luck – Cologne is the largest and most popular city of North Rhine-Westphalia (the state it is situated in) however it is not the capital. This may be one of several reasons for the ongoing and constant competition between Düsseldorf and Cologne, the two cities who hate each other.

Happy Birthday EU! – 60 years after the Treaties of Rome

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60 years ago the foundation for today’s EU was laid when Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Germany signed the Treaties of Rome.

60 years of development, successes, crises and backdrops, but most important of all: 60 years of peace in Europe and 60 years of growing together to one Union.
The EU’s development until today was never easy or without backdrops and problems: France didn’t want Great Britain to join, the Empty Chair Crisis and the non-completion of a European Constitution. However, the EU always found an answer, a solution to the problem and developed further, came back stronger.
The Common European Market was established, inner-EU border-controls abolished and the Euro invented.

And today? Where is Europe heading?
Of course there are problems and crises the EU has to face, maybe more challenging than ever before, or just different?
Migration from Northern Africa, terrorism, and still some outliers of the financial crisis are challenging, however the EU is strong enough to combat these challenges, if it stays together, if we stay together.
Anti-EU movements within some Nation-States, such as political organizations or Brexit as the ultimate are developments within the nations and among the people of Europe. Nevertheless, the reaction to Brexit as well as the recent outcomes of the election in the Netherlands show that the people still believe in the EU, and we should do so! The EU offers a lot: we can travel through the EU as we like, without a passport, for most of the countries we do not even have to change money. Without the EU every of our countries would be alone, would be a minor player (if so at all) at the world scene, between America, China and Russia.

Therefore, we should March For Europe, we should celebrate and we should thank what it brought already and what it offers us.

By Ann-Kristin Gross

Top 10 Fun Facts – Berlin

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This entry is part 4 of 8 in the series TOP TEN
  1. Berlin is unique, a city of superlatives and there are far more than 10 facts you should definitely know
  2. Sunny weather and culturally intense: Berlin has more museums than rainy days per year. Berlin offers more than 180 museums covering everything from arts over history and technical stuff to Currywurst and toys, while it rains only on about 106 days a year.
  3. Ever-moving city: Every hour 18 people move from one district to of the city to another one.
  4. Highly international: About 500,000 foreigners live in Berlin, coming from about 185 different nations. But Berlin is not only interesting to foreign nationalities: Many people from all over Germany live in Berlin and so it may not surprise that only 1/4 of all people living in Berlin, are born and raised in Berlin.
  5. Growing city: Every day 435 people move into Berlin while only 327 leave the city.
  6. Green, greener, Berlin: More than 44% of the city’s area is made up by parks, woods, river and other recreational areas. This makes Berlin the greenest city of Germany and high-ranking worldwide.
  7. City of superlatives:
    • KaDeWe is the largest department store of Continental Europe
    • longest beer-garden in the world (2.2 km long)
    • East Side Gallery is largest open-air gallery of the world
    • more than 9 times bigger than Paris
    • more bridges than Venice
  8. Berlin is the only city in the world having 3 opera houses, comprising more than 4000 seats
  9. Ever wanted to get gold directly from an ATM? – At the Gallerie Lafayette in Friedrichstraße this is possible! You can buy gold in 250g portions from the ‘Gold ATM’
  10. Relaxed mentality: Berliners are least worried about the future than everyone else in Germany.

Top 10 Fun Facts – Frankfurt am Main

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This entry is part 3 of 8 in the series TOP TEN
  1. International – It is estimated that people of approximately 180 different nationalities live in Frankfurt. This means that almost 1 in every 3 people living here do not hold a German passport.
  2. happy people – Frankfurt is one of the highest ranking cities of Germany and Europe regarding quality of life and life satisfaction.
  3. The world’s largest trade show for books is held in Frankfurt
  4. Frankfurter – the famous sausages originate from here.
  5. Mainhattan – Frankfurt’s nickname because of its significant skyline of skyscrapers, almost similar to Manhattan’s skyline, and the river Main dividing the city into two parts.
  6. Frankfurt and its surrounding area provide for a lot of nature. Additionally, Frankfurt has the largest inner-city forest in Germany.
  7. Culturally important – not only did Johannes Gutenberg the inventor of bookprinting live and work here, Johann Wolfgang Goethe was born and raised in Frankfurt as well.
  8. Frankfurt’s Henninger Tower is the highest beer reservoir in the world.
  9. Large, larger, Fraport – The airport of Frankfurt is not only the most frequented airport of Germany, having the highest travellar and visitor numbers, but it is also one of the largest airport in the world.
  10. After Wolrd War II Frankfurt contended for becoming the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, obviously Frankfurt lost against Bonn.

Top 10 Fun facts – Hamburg

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This entry is part 2 of 8 in the series TOP TEN
  1. John Lennon said: “I was born in Liverpool but raised in Hamburg
  2. When Hamburgers refer to the DOM they do not mean a church or cathedrale but a huge fair, taking place three times a year in Hamburg
  3. Hamburg has approximately 2500 bridges and hence not only more than Venice, Amsterdam and London combined, but it has more bridges than any other city of the world
  4. There are more millionaires living in Hamburg than in any other German city
  5. Hamburg is 7 times bigger than Paris and 14% of Hamburg is green space
  6. In Wedel is the ‘Willkomm-Höft’ situated. The only ship greeting dock of the world. It welcomes every ship entering the harbour of Hamburg with the national anthem and flag of the originating country
  7. The VIP-seats of the FC St.Pauli Stadium offer each an own Astra Pils tap as well as a small ice-rink where fresh Currywurst is served
  8. The Miniature Wonderland Hamburg is the largest railway museum as well as the largest model railway in the world. It inherits more the 12km of railway lines
  9. Only men as well as those women working there are allowed to enter the ‘Herbertstraße’ in Hamburg
  10. “Hummel, Hummel” “Mors, Mors” is a very common salutation in Hamburg. However, it is mere used as a distinctive mark and a battle cry among Hamburgers

ICH-Will-Deutsch-Lernen

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 “ich-will-deutsch-lernen” new onlineplatform for refugees and migrants

The German „Deutsche Volkshochschul – Verband”  provides a tool to support migrants and refugees in learning German. Name of the webportal is “ich-will-deutsch-lernen”. The available platform implied a German language course which helps to learn and improve German language skills, starting from level A1 to level B1. The Volkshochschul – Verband want to support the integration of refugees and migrants in culture and social living.
The content of the digital courses is according to the rules of integration courses in Germany.
Furthermore the portal offers an extensive range of material for alphabetisation. And last but not least the portal provides also one tool to improve German professional jargon. The user can choose out of 30 cross-sectoral scenarios and 11 professional communication activities.
Everybody may use the tool: do-it-yourself-learner, teachers and professional learning classes.
Teacher of integration courses and German courses have to register and build up their own class online. Then they are able to supervise their participants. Learners who start on their own will be supervised by tutors of DVV.
ich-will-deutsch-lernen.de

update: there are new features available