Ready to make your application?

Begin with the reason for your stay, then work through the application and the evidence that goes with it.

You want to apply for a visa or residence permit.

Follow the branch that fits your situation. Open a service to see what it involves.

Find the route for your stay

Work

Match your job and qualifications to the relevant route.

Arbeitsvisum / Blaue Karte EUWork visa / EU Blue Card

Study or training

Use the route for your course or vocational training.

Aufenthalt zu Studien- oder AusbildungszweckenResidence for study or vocational training

Join family

Start with your relationship and your family member’s status in Germany.

FamiliennachzugFamily reunification

Prepare the application

Gather the evidence

Use the responsible authority’s checklist for your route. Collect identity documents, evidence for your purpose of stay and any required translations.

DokumentenprüfungDocument review

Submit and keep a record

Save the confirmation

Apply through the responsible authority’s channel. Keep the submitted documents, date, confirmation and reference number.

AufenthaltserlaubnisTemporary residence permit

Follow the response

The authority asks for more

Check the request and reply by the stated date. Keep a copy of what you send.

The application is delayed

Use your application record to check progress and discuss the next step.

Follow this guide

Legal sources

Visas and residence permits follow the purpose of the stay. Sections 6, 7 and 81 AufenthG provide the general framework; the work, study, training and family provisions set route-specific requirements.

Updated 25 September 2026

Find the right person to help.

Find a migration lawyer

Drift BetaDrift’s AI assistant

Welcome to Drift.

What’s happening, and what would you like help with?

Tell me in your own words, or start here.

Leave out names, document numbers and sensitive details.

General information, not legal advice.

About Drift & your privacy

Good to know

Clarity, with care.

How Drift works, where information comes from and the choices you have. All in one place.

What Drift can help with

Drift is Drift’s AI assistant in beta. It explains general immigration information and helps find a relevant independent lawyer. It can make mistakes.

Drift does not assess your legal eligibility, choose a legal strategy or determine your deadline. A lawyer provides individual legal advice. A chat with Drift is not a confidential lawyer consultation.

This beta is still being tested. Please use fictional situations for now.

Sources & human review

Immigration explanations use selected official laws and government guidance. Drift pages describe our service. Sources have review dates, expiry dates and jurisdiction limits. Links appear with answers so you can check them.

If Drift cannot reliably help, the conversation can go to the Drift team’s private review inbox. The team can reply in the chat. This is not an emergency service or a promise of an immediate reply.

Explore Drift’s sources ↗

Your information & security

Drift Solutions UG operates this service. Cloudflare hosts the website, runs the chat backend and provides Workers AI. This beta does not promise EU-only processing or zero data retention.

Common identifiers are filtered in your browser before chat is sent, and again on the server before storage and AI processing. Filtering can miss details. A contact email requested for matching or team follow-up is sent when you provide it, then stored encrypted outside the chat transcript. Cloudflare still receives network information, such as your IP address, and anything the filters miss. Please leave out names, document numbers, full addresses and sensitive personal information.

If your city is missing, Drift may suggest an approximate city from your connection. You can confirm it, choose another city or type. The unconfirmed suggestion stays in your browser; only the city you provide or confirm is saved for matching. We do not request GPS access or save your IP address or coordinates for this matching feature.

General information does not require an email. Drift asks for one before matching you with a lawyer and stores it separately, encrypted. Providing an email for matching does not send a booking request. Case details are not passed to calendar availability checks.

Calendars load only when you choose “Book a consultation.” Calendly or TidyCal hosts the booking form. Your chat and saved email are not passed into it.

You can review, edit and approve a short case summary for your matched lawyer. Sharing approval is separate from booking. The current beta does not send lawyer-summary or booking follow-up emails. You can withdraw approval before sharing.

When Drift passes a conversation to the Drift team, it emails the recent filtered conversation to our support inbox. If you provide an email address, the team can reply to you directly. Email replies stay in email and do not appear in this chat. Our support mailbox uses Google Workspace. Deleting your Drift chat does not automatically delete emails already delivered to the support inbox. You can request deletion of support emails through the contact in our Privacy policy.

To improve workflows, we record limited operational signals such as the workflow stage and review reason. Improvement reports contain counts, not chat text or email addresses. We use fictional examples for automated regression tests, not raw chats for automatic model training.

Active chats, workflow signals, contact records and review copies expire 30 days after the chat starts. Provider backups have a separate expiry schedule.

Read the privacy explanation ↗

Speaking to Drift

Voice is optional. Tap the microphone to record up to 45 seconds, then review and edit the transcript before sending it. Your browser asks for microphone permission.

Audio is sent to Cloudflare Workers AI for transcription. Audio cannot be redacted before transcription; please leave out names, identifiers and sensitive information. Drift does not store recordings. Text is filtered after transcription, and only saved to your conversation when you send it. Cloudflare’s processing policies still apply; this is not a zero-retention promise.

Your conversation data

Download or delete this conversation’s active chat, contact and review records. These controls work with the conversation saved in this browser tab.

Other requests or a lost session ↗

Drift, lawyers & the small print

Drift is a public-interest migration initiative operated by Drift Solutions UG. The operator is not a registered charity. Platform access is free for people; lawyers pay a small platform fee. Drift does not take a commission on legal fees.

Lawyers are independent and charge separately for advice. Booking a first consultation does not automatically create an ongoing mandate. You agree any further work and fees with the law firm.