British national, Bolivian wife, kids, immigrate to Grmany

[infrid]

Hi,

I'm a british national. I married a Bolivina, and my 2 kids are Bolivian. I've not yet applied for their british passports, becuase I have to send my passport away for a huge amount of time, which I can't do with business travel.

Our goal is to go live in Germany. I'm wondering if anyone here knows where I can get information about the process of doing that. I beleive that I can "exercise my EU member right" and go live in Germany, and I also believe that the EU has freedom of momvement laws for EU family members. Being british, does that apply to me also? I thought despite not being schengen, that we are EU too.

I'd be grateful for any advice at all, as it's hard to get info. if I can get either answers, or links, or phone numbers of places where I might get more information about this, I'll be very grateful.

Many thanks.

[ALKB]

Hi,

I'm a british national. I married a Bolivina, and my 2 kids are Bolivian. I've not yet applied for their british passports, becuase I have to send my passport away for a huge amount of time, which I can't do with business travel.

Our goal is to go live in Germany. I'm wondering if anyone here knows where I can get information about the process of doing that. I beleive that I can "exercise my EU member right" and go live in Germany, and I also believe that the EU has freedom of momvement laws for EU family members. Being british, does that apply to me also? I thought despite not being schengen, that we are EU too.

I'd be grateful for any advice at all, as it's hard to get info. if I can get either answers, or links, or phone numbers of places where I might get more information about this, I'll be very grateful.

Many thanks.

Your wife (and your children if they don't have their British passports) need to apply for a short term Schengen visa. This should be issued free of charge and within 15 days.

Once you are in Germany, register your residence with the local municipality and make an appointment at the local alien department within 90 days of arriving to apply for residence cards for your family. Please note that any documents such as marriage and birth certificates that are not in German need to be translated by an official translator.

https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/324282/en/

You are saying that you can't send your passport in due to business travel - will you keep that employment when living in Germany? To stay longer than 90 days you as the EEA national need to exercise your EU treaty rights, usually by being employed in Germany.

[infrid]

thanks for the info,

as for employment: I might have to get another job then.. or could I start a company? (I'm a freelance IT consultant).

thanks.

[ALKB]

thanks for the info,

as for employment: I might have to get another job then.. or could I start a company? (I'm a freelance IT consultant).

thanks.

Well, the whole concept of freedom of movement is in place to facilitate the movement of EEA workers and their families. So, in order to stay in Germany you have to work in Germany - employed or self-employed (or be a full time student but I guess this is irrelevant to your situation).

Working outside of Germany while your family lives in Germany and you stop by every now and then in between projects elsewhere will not work - the reason for your spouse to stay there is you, if you are not there, no reason for your spouse to be allowed to stay. You will for instance also have trouble with health insurance for your family if you don't work in Germany.

Do you plan on living in Germany long term or are you looking at using Surinder Singh to move on to the UK after a while? If you want to use the Surinder Singh route then you will have to be especially meticulous regarding work and actually living and integrating into German life - the UK got much stricter in their criteria for this route since January 2014.

[infrid]

Again, thanks for your help here.

I have zero intention of living in UK ever. For me it's USA or Germany. Wife lived in Germany, is fluent in German and loves the place, so we had a deal - 5 years in latin America, start the family, then go back and get a better quality of life for our kids with our tax money, and this time it's her call, and I'm actually quite excited about it too, so it will be a long term settling thing.

So the entire objective is really to stay in Germany and enjoy, integrate with and contribute to their society.

As for work, I actually work at home - it's just I can be working for anyone in the world when I do; generally for US clients. It sounds like we're saying I can do that as a self-employed European citizen residing in Germany. If I were to register my self as a private worker there, and have accounts, and file taxes etc there, that should be sufficient, right?

Not sure if I want to set up a compnay yet : I'll have to look into Germany's equivalent of sole-traders in the UK vs company setup bureacracy/tax liabilities and all that good stuff; but it will all be legit and registered in Germany in any case.