Toyosi Ilesanmi, a Nigerian IT expert living in Berlin, Germany, has lamented his inability to have his wife join him in the European country after beginning the process 17 months ago.
In a recent interview with Deutsche Welle (DW), a German multilingual news network, Ilesanmi said he was being kept apart from his wife because of the long waiting time for a family reunification visa appointment at the German Consulate in Lagos.
“It has been almost 17 months now that we applied and we still haven’t gotten an interview date,” Ilesanmi said.
“To be honest, I don’t even know what the issue is but there is a serious long waiting time. And we are just still waiting.”
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Ilesanmi holds the blue card residency permit for highly skilled migrant workers in the European Union (EU).
Video Credit: DW
“The biggest challenge for me is the uncertainty about the process. You don’t even know what is going on, you don’t also know why. All you know is that you have applied and you have to wait,” said Ilesanmi.
Gerard Wolf, Deputy Consul General, German Consulate, Lagos, confirmed that there were indeed long delays in treating Nigerian worker’s family members’ visa applications at the consulate.
“Demand exceeds capacities,” Wolf said.
“We can only ask for applicants to bear with us and wait until their application comes up for processing because it will be better in the next year when better measures will come into place.”
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Germany needs 288,000 skilled foreign workers annually. However, some of the workers find the family reunification process difficult.
“If skilled workers are needed then they should be aided in such a way that reuniting with their families should not be hard,” said Ilesanmi.
“That will actually facilitate their integration into the system. I actually know of somebody who had to leave the country (Germany) because of this. He just couldn’t take it. He couldn’t wait any longer.”
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