Darmstadt: Eight months wait for an appointment at the immigration office

Responsibilities

The citizenship office the immigration office of the city of Darmstadt only serves as an initial contact and advice center. She is responsible for the preliminary check, receives documents and forwards them.

The waiting times relate only to initial contact and advice from the citizenship office of
Foreigners Authority. This has no influence on the duration of the naturalization and examination procedure. The Darmstadt Regional Council is responsible for this. cka

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But the authority is not able to cope with the workload. According to Mayor and Regulatory Affairs Officer Rafael Reisser (CDU), the number of submitted but not yet resolved applications for an extension or first-time residence permit was 3658 at the end of January. This contrasts with an average of 400 processed applications per month, as from Reisser’s response to the Request from the left.

Reisser: Higher remuneration in the surrounding area

Reisser also confirmed the long waiting times until appointments were made at the citizenship office. To counteract this, a second position was created in 2019. Since then there has been a “gradual reduction in waiting times”. But because of the pandemic-related closure of the town hall, 250 appointments should have been canceled. This is currently still having an impact. “The waiting time is currently around six to eight months,” writes Reißer. In the future, a waiting period of between four and six months should be implemented. Another position is planned for this in the budget year 2022. The reason for the work overload in the agency is also the high fluctuation in staff, as can be seen from the inquiry. Reisser sees the reasons for this in the massive work pressure due to the complex legal matter as well as in the steadily increasing workload due to “the backlogs built up over many years”. Obviously, it is difficult to find staff: “It is not possible to poach workers who are experienced under foreigner law from other authorities due to the comparatively higher remuneration in the surrounding area,” said Reisser. Many employees would apply in neighboring districts because they received higher remuneration there for the same job, the work processes were digitized and you could work from home.

Left calls for expansion of online access to city administration

For Uli Franke, parliamentary group leader of the Left, these are “scandalous conditions for the people on both sides of the desk”. It shouldn’t go on like this in the immigration office. As a solution, the parliamentary group calls for the rapid expansion of online access to the services of the city administration, which should begin with the immigration office. This is more important than, for example, the level-dependent emptying of garbage cans and must finally be given priority in the implementation of the digital city.

Overall, it must be clarified in which areas the city classifies its employees worse than other municipalities, said Franke. The educators have long known that Darmstadt is lagging behind other cities. Now this has also become known to the immigration authorities. In a rich city with a high cost of living, the left-wing faction expects that possible leeway in the categorization upwards will be used, so Franke.

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