After three weeks, my phone finally rang./“The employment office refused.”/“We’re not allowed to hire you for 2,600 Euro a month.”/”Crap! Dammit! No! What now?!”/Because I’m not an EU citizen, my boss could only hire me if there wasn’t an equally qualified applicant from Germany or Europe. [No longer applies for alumni of German universities.]/“But you’re in luck. You’re getting 3,000 Euro.”/Pretty crazy: the rule aimed at protecting the German market from wage dumping allowed me, as a foreigner, to get a higher salary./I was able to start in July./I had to show my bank statements a couple times to prove that I’m consistently earning that much./I really hated my first few days in Düsseldorf, having to start over without any friends./But then I started to get in the groove of things./For five years now, I had been paying into the German pension fund./Status request: update on permanent residence permit (allowing people to live and work in Germany without restriction)./An issue has arisen. It is assumed that you have worked longer than allowed during your studies. Provide all documentation from the past years to your case officer immediately./Wow, great!/I simply threw all my financial statements in my case worker’s mailbox./I’m sure he never read them. Pure harassment!/But I received my permanent residence permit. I went back to Hamburg in October of 2013. For my girlfriend, who was studying there, and for a job that paid more. There I earned 3,750 Euro.
