Foster parents’ battle with German authorities: A mother tells

No child without a passport! That was the one request my wife and I made to the youth welfare office before our foster son came to our family three months ago. We are already foster parents twice and have a lot of experience. That’s why we knew about the bureaucratic problems that often arise with foreign foster children. When we saw our son for the first time, the youth welfare office told us that the passport issues had been resolved.

But it was a child without a passport. Of course, we could have said at that moment that we didn’t want him. But we had already held this little worm in our arms for a long time, and his frightened but calm eyes had stolen into our hearts. This child, who had initially pressed himself against us so stiffly and fearfully, had already become calm and content, simply because we were with him. We had never experienced such incredible contentment in a child before. The problems with the passport seem insignificant compared to the great love that one feels.

Frustration of many foster parents: “We spend our days calling authorities”

Today, these quiet concerns have grown into loud worries. In the bureaucratic state of Germany, there are rules for everything, but no set way for a foreign foster child without a passport to obtain an identity. The biological mother fled the war in Ukraine and gave birth to the child in Germany. It is still unclear whether she will stay in Germany. What is clear is that she cannot adequately care for the child here, so the little one is with us for permanent care. Our son was born in Germany and has a German birth certificate – but no passport.

We are therefore trying to apply for Ukrainian citizenship first. For this, our child needs a so-called apostille, a certified copy of the German birth certificate, which we have to submit to the Ukrainian consulate. Apostille authorities include the Federal Office of Foreign Affairs and other immigration authorities in each federal state. However, it is not clear which authority or office should issue this to us. Whether they issue it is regulated differently in each federal state, in each municipality and community. For us, this means that for months our days have consisted of phoning any authorities that may be responsible and our evenings of sending emails to immigration authorities across Germany. Only to find out the next day that no progress has been made and we have to start all over again. No one sees it as their responsibility to issue us a certified copy. Instead, the authorities pass the responsibilities back and forth.

Without a passport, our son cannot travel, go on a school trip or open a bank account.

Our foster son is currently living with a fictitious certificate, i.e. a temporary residence permit, which expires on September 23rd. After that, we have to apply for a new one, which is valid for a few months. It is frustrating to realise that the system is designed to accommodate children, but does not fully consider what this means: our foster son is not allowed to travel without a passport, so we cannot leave Germany or go on holiday until further notice. With his current status, our son will not be able to go on a school trip or open a bank account, and completing an apprenticeship would be considerably more complicated. He would not be able to get married and, in the worst case scenario, his own children would also be stateless.

The youth welfare office tries to help us as best as possible – but here too they are helpless. In the end, we are always faced with the same problem: that the immigration office lets the youth welfare office down. That the immigration office lets us and our child down.

Many foster parents of foreign foster children are in the same situation as us. There are no uniform regulations for many identity-determining decisions, so officials are allowed to decide at their own discretion whether a foreign foster child born in Germany gets a passport. Some foster parents have been fighting for years to get a birth certificate or citizenship for their child. These children were born in Germany and only know this country, this language, this culture. If they do not get a German passport, they may face deportation to a foreign country when they reach adulthood.

Together with 80 other foster parents, we bring together a lot of expertise.

We have now joined forces with around 80 other foster parents in a Facebook group where we exchange information, experiences and contacts. Through hundreds of emails with paragraphs, case studies and reports of experiences that we have collected as a group, a certain level of expertise has been developed. This problem affects foster children from EU countries as well as those from third countries. Some have been fighting for birth certificates, apostilles or passports for years and have become experts in areas that are not actually part of their job: being foster parents.

Many foster families do not dare to go through the difficult process of clarifying their identity. They are afraid that the children could be taken away from their families because they are too unpleasant. Some give up at some point. And this despite the fact that placing the children in foster families is almost always the primary goal – residential care is much more expensive. Foster families are desperately needed, but at the same time our work is made incredibly difficult.

I hope that politicians will finally see the problems and address them. That these children will finally be given an identity. We need standardization in passport matters, clear rules on how we as foster parents should deal with such cases. These children have no lobby. But they need one.

Our foster son can now laugh the way one-year-olds usually do. If we put him in his bed with a toy, he babbles contentedly to himself and occupies himself. When he cries, his two big sisters are there to comfort him. And he sleeps through the night, as if his body was regaining the rest it had not had for so long.

We would also like to have this peace and quiet for ourselves as a family. We dream of not having to write endless emails and make phone calls every day, but of being able to enjoy time together as a family. Perhaps next year we will all travel together within the EU.

This child deserves a future.

I am particularly afraid of the upcoming federal elections. After the election results in Saxony and Thuringia, I don’t even want to imagine what this could mean for the residency rights of our foster son and our family. We are not demanding the impossible, but only that his status is clarified and that he is given the rights to which he is entitled.

This child deserves a future. It is not his fault that his biological parents are not able to take care of his passport issues. It is not his fault that bureaucracy and politics are so divided. This child also has a right to an identity, be it German or Ukrainian.

Note: Upon request of the star Both the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BaMF) and the Office for Foreign Affairs have stated that they cannot provide any information on these matters as they do not consider themselves responsible. The BaMF referred to the Office for Foreign Affairs. This in turn sees the responsibility with the individual states: “The responsibility of the respective domestic authority is a matter for the states,” the office wrote in an email. We received no answer to our question about a planned standardization of passport matters.