Test Story

This is both a criminal story, and a migrant story.

This week, a court episode is opening up in Munich.  There is this accusation....mass 'help' (illegal in this case) in getting migrants through the German language test.  Focus does a good job of telling this story, and I'd recommend a read.

While it revolves around a criminal gang....there's around five folks who are standing for the charges at this point.  All seem to be from Kosovo originally.

For Americans not familiar with the immigration path in Germany....once you get to the acceptance point, there is still the stumbling block of attending German language classes, then passing the test at the end.  If you can't pass the test....your odds of keeping the visa will diminish.

Having gone through the route myself, I will note three big issues.

First, the classes are highly structured and efficient....to the degree that you'd expect out of a first-year American university.  If you are a non-German, over the age of thirty, and never having any secondary school education....this is a rough situation.  Plus you are talking about three hours a day of class (four days a week), with a suggested homework/study-work of an hour minimum each day.

Second, the tests revolve around four elements. There is the tape-test where you get 30 seconds of some train-station announcement, and you need to pick the correct choice (of four) on some part of the announcement.  This typically gets played one single time, and odd echo effect used is always a problem to deal with.  Then you have the job-application 'note' that you need to write in a basic letter format.  It's nothing fancy, but you have to hit a couple of key structure points.  Then you have a general quiz.  The last part?  A simple five minutes Q and A session....with ten generally easy questions thrown at you, some pictures given to you to identify the situation, and mildly stressful.  A handful of applicants will do well, but the bulk of folks will admit that this (overall) is a highly stressful test because of the way it's built.

Third, you can occasionally find instructors who make the class entertaining or keeping your focus sharp.  I will simply say that there aren't that many of them, and it's just luck if you fall into that type of class.

So back to the court episode.  The suspicion laid out by the prosecutor is that this guy/gang helped folks from Kosovo and Iraq pass the tests.  The method?  He found non-Germans who had been in Germany and had great language skills....to show up and take the test for new guy.  Cost factor?  They say up to 5,000 Euro was paid.  No one says this was the normal price....just that it did eventually get up into the 5k range. 

How long was this done?  'Years' is uttered by the prosecutor.

Prison time if convicted?  Max is 10 years.

Personally, I find this a bit difficult to believe because the test requires you to show up and provide a passport.  The candidate would hand his/her passport over to the fake tester and the German handling the test should have done a review (look) at the passport.  The passport review seems to be lacking in some way. 

All done in just one location?  No, that's the other odd part of the story....there's at least seven locations where this occurred.

So at the end of this....the real question is this....are there hundreds (maybe even a couple thousand) immigrants to Germany....who never passed the test and marginally speak German?  Without any doubt....yes.

Can you survive this way?  The answer here is also yes.  Some German political group sat down with a language/integration group and built this assessment that you need to reach X-level to be safely integrated into Germany.

This involves not only the language element, but a history/constitution class (the lesser of stress in my humble opinion).  The history/constitution class?  At the end, they are awful nice and actually give you the list of questions that can be used....but it's a listing of 300 questions/answers that you end up having to memorize for the test.

Looking around today, at local commercial delivery or Amazon delivery drivers....almost all of them are new immigrants to the country, with basic language skills. You can find various jobs which don't require much beyond basic German.  So this goal that the politicians stress, might be worthy if you were going to enter into some accounting program, or electrician training class.  For the rest of them, it won't matter.

I went to class in one period of time with a Ghana guy.  He had a mini-job already....grocery stock guy....450 Euro a month.  He'd impressed the manager enough that he got a full-time shift-manager offer, if he'd just pass the language/integration tests.  He'd admit daily about the whole structure thing of German being a problem, and worried constantly over the test business.  The deeper you go into the whole business....the more you start to look at the test and stress over passing.  I can see why some folks would be willing to pay a thousand Euro for someone to take the test for them.  The stress is more of the problem than the actual test itself.