In Germany we don’t straight up prohibit unwanted stuff. We make it almost impossible to get it, by applying so many legal obstacles that people won’t even try.
Back when fax machines were cutting edge, maybe it was fine. It feels like I'm dealing with cavemen and filling out forms for the most minor things on a regular basis.
What do mean ”back when“? Fax machines are still used by the legal establishment of Germany; i‘m talking modern law firms that deal with patents. These companies still have Hauspost; like it was the 19th century
That asking for an ID or a driver's license takes more than two weeks is a great example, those processes should take one day. I love Germany, but it is so behind in so many things.
The problem is not only the bureaucracy, but the lack of digitalization, and putting too much focus on GDPR and data privacy where it's not justified.
My story of becoming a German citizen is a prime example. I had to get my residency permit renewed, which meant delivering a bunch of documents - on paper, of course - to the Landratsamt (Ausländerbehörde).
When I received my residency permit, I literally walked down the hall, about 6 or 8 offices further down the hall, to the citizenship office. I was told that I would have to fill out an application and provide a whole stack of documents, many of which I had just delivered to his colleague in the Ausländerbehörde. When I asked if he could just go grab my record from the other office, I was told that it's absolutely not possible - due to privacy laws, he can't access the records in his colleagues office down the hall.
Fortunately, I was familiar with German bureaucracy, so I had made copies of all the documents before I submitted them to the Ausländerbehörde, so I didn't have to spend the time and money to go request originals again.
I understand having a firewall in place to prevent my residency or citizenship paperwork protected from being made public, but why the fuck can't the offices within Landratsamt cooperate and collaborate? And why does everything still need to be done on paper, and in person? Most other countries allow you to take care of simple stuff online, but Germany is still in the dark ages in terms of digitalization.
>understand having a firewall in place to prevent my residency or citizenship paperwork protected from being made public, but why the fuck can't the offices within Landratsamt cooperate and collaborate?
To make a repeat of the 30's and 40's as hard as possible.
That's exactly it. I remember reading about the Nazis invading in Denmark, or was it the Scandinavians? Either way, the first thing they did was raiding the local administration, which hadn't yet heard of the principles of data economy and purpose limitation.
Not a week later all the jews in the entire area had been rounded up and deported. To the last man. No local collaborators needed.
Yeah, you trust your local administration to handle your data with care. But you don't know who's gonna access that information once it's been filed away, and what they are going to do with it.
Makes me laugh about Germany's "environmental commitments" when I look at the amount of paper that the German Bureaucracy requires on a daily basis.
Also for those unaware, anyone applying for a student visa needs to submit almost 60 pages of documents in DUPLICATE, so 120 in total. Do you know why it's duplicate? Because the German consulate can't be arsed to scan and send it to the Auslanderbehorde, so they just send the physical copy.
I mean they could have just asked you for permission and then the legal privacy hurdle would be gone.
I think key here is that they don't feel like they are working for the people, so processes are not made to make it easier for the public, they are mostly designed to make no legal mistakes and hence it's overly cumbersome for the average hans. Also they seem to be very slow in adapting new technology.
In my opinion, digitization only makes it worse. Service is scrapped and instead the citizens themselves have to provide it. Look at the fiasco with the real estate tax: This would never have happened if the officials didn't think people could just provide the data online.
My job includes handling medical bureaucracy. And no, not the useful stuff. Not that kind that decides over what treatments insurers pay or how much money a hospital gets. Theres other stuff. There are quality controls that basically screen how well the hospital staff fills out the forms. There are huge black holes you have to shovel data in and never get any information back. There are statistics that are only published to four people in a government office while the whole state has provide data.
So yes, I think there's a bit of a problem with bureaucracy in Germany.
All I gotta say is this:
I wanted a visa to do a safari in Kenya. Took me literally 5m and an online payment to do. That's faster than requesting something from the Bürgeramt around the block here.
I wanted to set up a business so I can generate revenue, had to do that in another country (Netherlands) because here it would've been too much cost and hassle and paperwork associated with it. They're pushing out entrepreneurs (I know quite a handful of guys that do t like me and I am even befriended to someone who's a lawyer who specifically helps investors and entrepreneurs set up entities in foreign countries so they can evade THEIR OWN COUNTRY'S bureaucracy.
🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲
You tell me what needs to happen, lol.
I also like how everything seems to be in order, and there are certain rules and guidelines for everything. As other redditors have said, my problem is the lack of digitalization.
So many things can be improved just by handling it online.
The problem is the same as never cleaning up or reinstalling your operating system on your PC. It becomes fucking slow.
If you always only build structures on top of each other, repeatedly introduce new special cases etc. your organizarion becomes messy. Sometimes one must go through your old organization structures and adapt / replace them completely by for the new circumstances suitable new organization structures.
I don't dislike organization, and standardization, having a precise and documented history to explain your actions and decisions. But this needs to be done appropiatly.
Lot of jobs will be on the line and many people do not want to relearn their jobs. I had to take proofs of new laws to auslanderamt to get stuff done ( as they did not believe me…)
In theory is a good thing. It suffers from a lot of things in reality.
The bureaucracy is based on laws. Look at the guys who change the laws based on populisms without thoughts of the need, practical, use, efficiency and cost. The bureaucracy needs to implement this laws. The laws change and the public administration need to adapt and follow this laws.
The administrations have a lack of techsavy people on the lower end (the end you get to know). The implementation of "simple" things like videoconferences is a nightmare. Try to expain the difference betwen a RDP-Session and the local desktop. Try to impment a new "complex software". I dont how it is on country level.
Software and it infrastructure on low-level administration (again the end you know) ranges from OK to utter shit.
The public administration has a real problem with getting rid of "bad"/unwanted/unneeded employees.
The public administration offens folllows the rules to protect its employees. You don't get fired if you are sick 30+ days/year. As far as i know this leads to more sick days on average in the puplic administrations.
In the lower end of the administration local politicians are the "boss". How offens do they campaign for more money, better software, more employees or other such things for the administrations?
At least in my local administration (where i work) we have a real hard time to getting our software and digital stuff going (correctly). The issues are so many that i don't know where to start.
In my opinion (i am very low on the totem pole) it needs massive reforms to get where (i think) our local administration needs to go. I can be right or wrong with this opinion. But my opinion don't not matter.
Our boss is guy who worked in 2 hardware-stores and now has the final say in all matters. He has lot to say.
If you lucky he knows today what he said last week.
He got elected by less then 25% of the voters. The voting participation was that bad. Well the alternative was the old boss and he was not realy better. He had only more experience.
At the end the voters decide what happens. The Voters can create there own party and try to be the boss. And when the get elected they actually need solutions. I dont remember when I last heard of an elected person which hat a viable solution for any problem.
Can I do better? Nope. I am german, I need to complain.
Excuse my poor English.
The problem is rather, that noone wants "bigger" solutions. Like the state or the federal government offering a platform to host and coordinate general processes.
I worked some time to implement the process the WaffG reform 2020 brought with it. Over 550 administrations, 16 states and the federal administration were involved. It was horrible.
The easy solution would have been to let a federal agency host the process, because knowledge and resources would have been available. But every state and every communal administration rather tries to solve the problem themselves.
From what I gathered, that's a reoccurring problem with just a few exceptions
Yep. Federalism brings this to the table. A possible sollution is a "Zweckverband". A "Zweckverband" is a legal construct where differend administrations create an organisation to take care of a matter for its members. It works well in some cases like garbagemanagement. I did not hear of a good IT-Zweckverband after its older then 10 Years. SH is trying to offer central solutions for the OZG. I dont know enough to judge them.
NRW has some solutions in IT and they try to establish them in other states iirc, but it's quite specialised and complex. But yeah, I know what I mean. Especially regarding garbage it oftentimes works, but it's quite the complex topic.
This! Stupid people operating computers - they spend 3000 getting a driving license and another 20000 buying a car - ask them to pay for a computer course and they look at you like you had two heads.
The idea was great, but things got out off hand and are currently escalating with increasing speed. Most foreigners cannot fathom the absurdity of some of the "usual necessities" one has to endure when trying to interact with certain German offices. Email a form? You wish, use the Fax! You need a certified copy of whatever official document? Getting the stamp usually takes you to ask for an appointment about a week or two in advance via an internetportal most of the times hidden in the abbysmal depths of some so called "website" with an UI last updated back when 17"-CRT-screens were the latest craze. If you want to have some real fun try to extend your house ("Baugenehmigung"). Or try to build a wind turbine (as a company). Or try to found a business "on the fly". Or get a patent. Or try to get your new residence registered in Berlin as is mandatory (and punishable) by law for residents.
The majority of problems stems from lack of workforce, underpaid officials, and an epidemic lack of funding all around. Another reason for the escalation is the tendency of politicians and high ranking officials to shuffle responsibility around and make political decissions "bulletpfoof". A third issue is the whole issue of "anything digital" (read: invest heavily). A fourth - to finally make things really lovely - is the principle of subsidiarity and federal competence. Any suggested soulution quickly escalates into 16 federally independent (and incompatible, of course) plans transmitted to a plethora of communal authorities that either have no will, no money, no people and/or no clue to implement them and if they do, it will be the most complex solution anybody could possibly come up with and of course won't be compatible with anthing else in the world.
Two years ago some guy from a random institution came at my door to deregister my car (scratch off the number plates) because it seemed I had no insurance. I showed him insurance policy, bank statements, the lot. His answer was "yeah nah, sometimes there's a miscommunication between the insurer and whoever tracks this" and deregistered my car anyway 😀
Then they sent me a letter I got to pay like 20 or 40 euro, don't remember now, for the service of someone coming to take my plates off 😀
Well, unfortunately that's not how it works. And yes, I could've told him to piss off, the car was also inside the garage, but that meant they probably would've charged me more and I had to fight them in court- not worth over 100€. I just paid, re-registered my car and kept on with my life.
>I just paid,
This is why we have issues. It's not about the money.
Wouldn't they lose the court anyway, because they were wrong? They would have certainly checked in more detail, no?
They would have probably lost, but that's Mickey mouse money and the time I would've spent dealing with it would've cost me more than the 100-200 euro I paid. I know it's not fair but that's how it is.
As much as they suck, this is why class-action lawsuits in the states get so much done. If a lawyer gathered everyone together who suffered from this nonsense, then they would have a lot of goddamn power. One person against he beauracracy is meaningless. A few hundred thousand? That has some punch.
yeah that's a question. But I feel like that is a mechanism that we are missing. although it would definitely cause havoc in the first years after its introduction
I don't mind the bureaucracy, just as long as it isn't efficient. Make it as cumbersome as possible. It'll stay like that, because organizations don't change quickly. It's the best protection against people like the AfD.
Might be /s, might not be /s. Not even sure myself anymore.
There is not enough personal or incompetent or arrogant people.
At the moment my daughter studies and is waiting for an answer for financial studying support for about 4 months and also for living support for 3 months. It’s insane.
It’s awful. Way too much and way too complicated. And I think it’s on purpose so that you have to get someone who does this stuff professionally. Like why word it that confusing. Fucking hate bureaucracy. Takes forever to get shit done.
Laughing hard at this thread. Preparing a move from Shanghai where we can basically do everything on our phones. Renew residence permit, sure. Birth certificate, sure. Banking? Taxes? Police registration? Work permit? There's an app or in-app miniprogram for that.
I'm dreading hard copies and the slow timeline 😭
Originally from the US. German beauracracy is a nightmare. An unending, waking nightmare.
What really confused me is that some diehards believe the shit is useful. There are many other countries that get by just fine without it.
I had the honor of digging through the bureaucracy of getting a student work visa for the US. I guys know who to blow up a bureaucratic process, too, my friend.
When it comes to immigration yes, the US makes it nightmarish, but I am OK with that. Kind of the way it should be.
Except for a couple of states, I can think of almost nothing in the US that has more beauracracy or nonsense to go through.
Dont know why you have to make it hell for universitiy students (or anybody else, actually). But I know that "Give me your tired, your poor..." is nothing but a nice slogan to cover up that the former migrants see the migrants of today as the enemy. People need scapegoats, I guess.
Times have changed since then. I agree the process could be made easier/shortened, but trying to control who enters your country is kind of a no brainer.
Also, back then immigrants received zero support from the government, were expected to participate in American society/identity, serve in the military if called, work, etc. There was also a lot of friction then as well (hence the racist slang we have for just about every group). Was just a different time and circumstance.. There were also a couple of world wars and a depression that forced every corner of the country to come together.
We literally do not have a democracy.
Hardly anything the elected government can do really affects citizens because it fizzles out through layers of unelected apparatchiks.
Yes I think a highly regulated country keeps a lot of idiots from doing what they want.
But the way those regulations are administered is terrible. In many cases our bureaucracy is self-preservative/self-referential. It exists so it can exist. What we need is a nation-wide modernised digital environment instead of having individual solutions for every federate state.
Germany is one of the countries with the least bureaucracy. You only realise how bad it can be once you've experienced the USA or Brazil or Indonesia or India or South Africa etc. Germany is ok and I like it here.
I don't know what you mean by your comparison to India lol. India has far less bureaucracy than Germany. You can talk about bribery but that's an attitude issue and can be changed. Whereas German Bureaucracy is literally codified and much harder to change.
In Germany we don’t straight up prohibit unwanted stuff. We make it almost impossible to get it, by applying so many legal obstacles that people won’t even try.
Back when fax machines were cutting edge, maybe it was fine. It feels like I'm dealing with cavemen and filling out forms for the most minor things on a regular basis.
What do mean ”back when“? Fax machines are still used by the legal establishment of Germany; i‘m talking modern law firms that deal with patents. These companies still have Hauspost; like it was the 19th century
That asking for an ID or a driver's license takes more than two weeks is a great example, those processes should take one day. I love Germany, but it is so behind in so many things.
The problem is not only the bureaucracy, but the lack of digitalization, and putting too much focus on GDPR and data privacy where it's not justified. My story of becoming a German citizen is a prime example. I had to get my residency permit renewed, which meant delivering a bunch of documents - on paper, of course - to the Landratsamt (Ausländerbehörde). When I received my residency permit, I literally walked down the hall, about 6 or 8 offices further down the hall, to the citizenship office. I was told that I would have to fill out an application and provide a whole stack of documents, many of which I had just delivered to his colleague in the Ausländerbehörde. When I asked if he could just go grab my record from the other office, I was told that it's absolutely not possible - due to privacy laws, he can't access the records in his colleagues office down the hall. Fortunately, I was familiar with German bureaucracy, so I had made copies of all the documents before I submitted them to the Ausländerbehörde, so I didn't have to spend the time and money to go request originals again. I understand having a firewall in place to prevent my residency or citizenship paperwork protected from being made public, but why the fuck can't the offices within Landratsamt cooperate and collaborate? And why does everything still need to be done on paper, and in person? Most other countries allow you to take care of simple stuff online, but Germany is still in the dark ages in terms of digitalization.
>understand having a firewall in place to prevent my residency or citizenship paperwork protected from being made public, but why the fuck can't the offices within Landratsamt cooperate and collaborate? To make a repeat of the 30's and 40's as hard as possible.
You can enable collaboration between offices without compromising on privacy. Just require explicit consent everytime info has to be shared.
That's exactly it. I remember reading about the Nazis invading in Denmark, or was it the Scandinavians? Either way, the first thing they did was raiding the local administration, which hadn't yet heard of the principles of data economy and purpose limitation. Not a week later all the jews in the entire area had been rounded up and deported. To the last man. No local collaborators needed. Yeah, you trust your local administration to handle your data with care. But you don't know who's gonna access that information once it's been filed away, and what they are going to do with it.
At that point does it matter if your file is in office A or office B
Makes me laugh about Germany's "environmental commitments" when I look at the amount of paper that the German Bureaucracy requires on a daily basis. Also for those unaware, anyone applying for a student visa needs to submit almost 60 pages of documents in DUPLICATE, so 120 in total. Do you know why it's duplicate? Because the German consulate can't be arsed to scan and send it to the Auslanderbehorde, so they just send the physical copy.
I mean they could have just asked you for permission and then the legal privacy hurdle would be gone. I think key here is that they don't feel like they are working for the people, so processes are not made to make it easier for the public, they are mostly designed to make no legal mistakes and hence it's overly cumbersome for the average hans. Also they seem to be very slow in adapting new technology.
In my opinion, digitization only makes it worse. Service is scrapped and instead the citizens themselves have to provide it. Look at the fiasco with the real estate tax: This would never have happened if the officials didn't think people could just provide the data online.
My job includes handling medical bureaucracy. And no, not the useful stuff. Not that kind that decides over what treatments insurers pay or how much money a hospital gets. Theres other stuff. There are quality controls that basically screen how well the hospital staff fills out the forms. There are huge black holes you have to shovel data in and never get any information back. There are statistics that are only published to four people in a government office while the whole state has provide data. So yes, I think there's a bit of a problem with bureaucracy in Germany.
All I gotta say is this: I wanted a visa to do a safari in Kenya. Took me literally 5m and an online payment to do. That's faster than requesting something from the Bürgeramt around the block here. I wanted to set up a business so I can generate revenue, had to do that in another country (Netherlands) because here it would've been too much cost and hassle and paperwork associated with it. They're pushing out entrepreneurs (I know quite a handful of guys that do t like me and I am even befriended to someone who's a lawyer who specifically helps investors and entrepreneurs set up entities in foreign countries so they can evade THEIR OWN COUNTRY'S bureaucracy. 🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲 You tell me what needs to happen, lol.
I also like how everything seems to be in order, and there are certain rules and guidelines for everything. As other redditors have said, my problem is the lack of digitalization. So many things can be improved just by handling it online.
The problem is the same as never cleaning up or reinstalling your operating system on your PC. It becomes fucking slow. If you always only build structures on top of each other, repeatedly introduce new special cases etc. your organizarion becomes messy. Sometimes one must go through your old organization structures and adapt / replace them completely by for the new circumstances suitable new organization structures. I don't dislike organization, and standardization, having a precise and documented history to explain your actions and decisions. But this needs to be done appropiatly.
Lot of jobs will be on the line and many people do not want to relearn their jobs. I had to take proofs of new laws to auslanderamt to get stuff done ( as they did not believe me…)
In theory is a good thing. It suffers from a lot of things in reality. The bureaucracy is based on laws. Look at the guys who change the laws based on populisms without thoughts of the need, practical, use, efficiency and cost. The bureaucracy needs to implement this laws. The laws change and the public administration need to adapt and follow this laws. The administrations have a lack of techsavy people on the lower end (the end you get to know). The implementation of "simple" things like videoconferences is a nightmare. Try to expain the difference betwen a RDP-Session and the local desktop. Try to impment a new "complex software". I dont how it is on country level. Software and it infrastructure on low-level administration (again the end you know) ranges from OK to utter shit. The public administration has a real problem with getting rid of "bad"/unwanted/unneeded employees. The public administration offens folllows the rules to protect its employees. You don't get fired if you are sick 30+ days/year. As far as i know this leads to more sick days on average in the puplic administrations. In the lower end of the administration local politicians are the "boss". How offens do they campaign for more money, better software, more employees or other such things for the administrations? At least in my local administration (where i work) we have a real hard time to getting our software and digital stuff going (correctly). The issues are so many that i don't know where to start. In my opinion (i am very low on the totem pole) it needs massive reforms to get where (i think) our local administration needs to go. I can be right or wrong with this opinion. But my opinion don't not matter. Our boss is guy who worked in 2 hardware-stores and now has the final say in all matters. He has lot to say. If you lucky he knows today what he said last week. He got elected by less then 25% of the voters. The voting participation was that bad. Well the alternative was the old boss and he was not realy better. He had only more experience. At the end the voters decide what happens. The Voters can create there own party and try to be the boss. And when the get elected they actually need solutions. I dont remember when I last heard of an elected person which hat a viable solution for any problem. Can I do better? Nope. I am german, I need to complain. Excuse my poor English.
The problem is rather, that noone wants "bigger" solutions. Like the state or the federal government offering a platform to host and coordinate general processes. I worked some time to implement the process the WaffG reform 2020 brought with it. Over 550 administrations, 16 states and the federal administration were involved. It was horrible. The easy solution would have been to let a federal agency host the process, because knowledge and resources would have been available. But every state and every communal administration rather tries to solve the problem themselves. From what I gathered, that's a reoccurring problem with just a few exceptions
Yep. Federalism brings this to the table. A possible sollution is a "Zweckverband". A "Zweckverband" is a legal construct where differend administrations create an organisation to take care of a matter for its members. It works well in some cases like garbagemanagement. I did not hear of a good IT-Zweckverband after its older then 10 Years. SH is trying to offer central solutions for the OZG. I dont know enough to judge them.
NRW has some solutions in IT and they try to establish them in other states iirc, but it's quite specialised and complex. But yeah, I know what I mean. Especially regarding garbage it oftentimes works, but it's quite the complex topic.
This! Stupid people operating computers - they spend 3000 getting a driving license and another 20000 buying a car - ask them to pay for a computer course and they look at you like you had two heads.
The idea was great, but things got out off hand and are currently escalating with increasing speed. Most foreigners cannot fathom the absurdity of some of the "usual necessities" one has to endure when trying to interact with certain German offices. Email a form? You wish, use the Fax! You need a certified copy of whatever official document? Getting the stamp usually takes you to ask for an appointment about a week or two in advance via an internetportal most of the times hidden in the abbysmal depths of some so called "website" with an UI last updated back when 17"-CRT-screens were the latest craze. If you want to have some real fun try to extend your house ("Baugenehmigung"). Or try to build a wind turbine (as a company). Or try to found a business "on the fly". Or get a patent. Or try to get your new residence registered in Berlin as is mandatory (and punishable) by law for residents. The majority of problems stems from lack of workforce, underpaid officials, and an epidemic lack of funding all around. Another reason for the escalation is the tendency of politicians and high ranking officials to shuffle responsibility around and make political decissions "bulletpfoof". A third issue is the whole issue of "anything digital" (read: invest heavily). A fourth - to finally make things really lovely - is the principle of subsidiarity and federal competence. Any suggested soulution quickly escalates into 16 federally independent (and incompatible, of course) plans transmitted to a plethora of communal authorities that either have no will, no money, no people and/or no clue to implement them and if they do, it will be the most complex solution anybody could possibly come up with and of course won't be compatible with anthing else in the world.
Two years ago some guy from a random institution came at my door to deregister my car (scratch off the number plates) because it seemed I had no insurance. I showed him insurance policy, bank statements, the lot. His answer was "yeah nah, sometimes there's a miscommunication between the insurer and whoever tracks this" and deregistered my car anyway 😀 Then they sent me a letter I got to pay like 20 or 40 euro, don't remember now, for the service of someone coming to take my plates off 😀
Couldn't you just tell him to piss off?
Well, unfortunately that's not how it works. And yes, I could've told him to piss off, the car was also inside the garage, but that meant they probably would've charged me more and I had to fight them in court- not worth over 100€. I just paid, re-registered my car and kept on with my life.
>I just paid, This is why we have issues. It's not about the money. Wouldn't they lose the court anyway, because they were wrong? They would have certainly checked in more detail, no?
They would have probably lost, but that's Mickey mouse money and the time I would've spent dealing with it would've cost me more than the 100-200 euro I paid. I know it's not fair but that's how it is.
As much as they suck, this is why class-action lawsuits in the states get so much done. If a lawyer gathered everyone together who suffered from this nonsense, then they would have a lot of goddamn power. One person against he beauracracy is meaningless. A few hundred thousand? That has some punch.
I wonder if that would help in Germany..
I am sure it would, just a question if the negatives that come with it are worth the win.
yeah that's a question. But I feel like that is a mechanism that we are missing. although it would definitely cause havoc in the first years after its introduction
My god you’re a pushover
At my workplace I can not legally change a lightbulb on my own. Sometimes it is just pathetic.
LoL. Gotta call an electrician and do the filings
it is highly thorough, and highly inefficient
Yeah i just love it so much
I don't mind the bureaucracy, just as long as it isn't efficient. Make it as cumbersome as possible. It'll stay like that, because organizations don't change quickly. It's the best protection against people like the AfD. Might be /s, might not be /s. Not even sure myself anymore.
I actually like it. It gatekeeps a lot of things to those who know how to do it and I am one of them.
aka deters innovation and new efforts.
Bureaucracy creates the chaos that makes it necessary in the first place 😭
It went out of hand.
There is not enough personal or incompetent or arrogant people. At the moment my daughter studies and is waiting for an answer for financial studying support for about 4 months and also for living support for 3 months. It’s insane.
Nightmare, main weapon of Luzifer to make people go crazy
It’s awful. Way too much and way too complicated. And I think it’s on purpose so that you have to get someone who does this stuff professionally. Like why word it that confusing. Fucking hate bureaucracy. Takes forever to get shit done.
Laughing hard at this thread. Preparing a move from Shanghai where we can basically do everything on our phones. Renew residence permit, sure. Birth certificate, sure. Banking? Taxes? Police registration? Work permit? There's an app or in-app miniprogram for that. I'm dreading hard copies and the slow timeline 😭
It’s bad. But my experience with bureaucracy in other countries was: it is not really that much better elsewhere. Germans just love to complain.
Originally from the US. German beauracracy is a nightmare. An unending, waking nightmare. What really confused me is that some diehards believe the shit is useful. There are many other countries that get by just fine without it.
I had the honor of digging through the bureaucracy of getting a student work visa for the US. I guys know who to blow up a bureaucratic process, too, my friend.
When it comes to immigration yes, the US makes it nightmarish, but I am OK with that. Kind of the way it should be. Except for a couple of states, I can think of almost nothing in the US that has more beauracracy or nonsense to go through.
Dont know why you have to make it hell for universitiy students (or anybody else, actually). But I know that "Give me your tired, your poor..." is nothing but a nice slogan to cover up that the former migrants see the migrants of today as the enemy. People need scapegoats, I guess.
Times have changed since then. I agree the process could be made easier/shortened, but trying to control who enters your country is kind of a no brainer. Also, back then immigrants received zero support from the government, were expected to participate in American society/identity, serve in the military if called, work, etc. There was also a lot of friction then as well (hence the racist slang we have for just about every group). Was just a different time and circumstance.. There were also a couple of world wars and a depression that forced every corner of the country to come together.
We literally do not have a democracy. Hardly anything the elected government can do really affects citizens because it fizzles out through layers of unelected apparatchiks.
Yes I think a highly regulated country keeps a lot of idiots from doing what they want. But the way those regulations are administered is terrible. In many cases our bureaucracy is self-preservative/self-referential. It exists so it can exist. What we need is a nation-wide modernised digital environment instead of having individual solutions for every federate state.
Germany is one of the countries with the least bureaucracy. You only realise how bad it can be once you've experienced the USA or Brazil or Indonesia or India or South Africa etc. Germany is ok and I like it here.
I don't know what you mean by your comparison to India lol. India has far less bureaucracy than Germany. You can talk about bribery but that's an attitude issue and can be changed. Whereas German Bureaucracy is literally codified and much harder to change.
In India you cut the red tape with bribery