Immigration Office Branch Reopens on University Campus

The outstanding research environment is certainly one of the major draws when it comes to attracting well-educated people from abroad to Kaiserslautern. To ensure that the registration process in Germany proceeds as quickly as possible, the city has operated a branch office of its Foreigners’ Registration Office at RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau for the past 20 years. However, due to the pandemic, this office was closed in recent years and has now reopened.

Since early April, the branch office—located centrally on campus in Building 38 (Administration Building, Inner Courtyard, Middle Pavilion)—has once again been available every Tuesday and Thursday as a point of contact for all questions regarding immigration law. The branch office is staffed by two case workers from the Immigration Office and two student assistants from RPTU, who are first being trained and will then take turns assisting the case workers.

“The pandemic years have caused deep disruptions, particularly in the education sector. I am glad that, with the reopening of the Immigration Office, we can now restore a bit more normalcy on campus,” explained Mayor Beate Kimmel at the official reopening on Thursday. The branch office serves as an important point of contact for international students, research assistants, and professors from the university and surrounding institutes, eliminating the need for them to travel to City Hall. Kimmel: “Kaiserslautern is an international, open city. Our goal is therefore to make it as easy as possible for students and researchers to settle in Kaiserslautern. The Foreigners’ Registration Office on campus makes a significant contribution to this.”

“People from over 120 countries work, conduct research, and study at RPTU in Kaiserslautern,” says Professor Dr. Arnd Poetzsch-Heffter, co-president of RPTU. “About 25 percent of the students and doctoral candidates at RPTU in Kaiserslautern come from abroad. We are therefore very pleased that the city has reopened the Immigration Office’s campus branch following the pandemic. It serves as an important point of contact, and our Office of International Affairs works closely with it.”

As a university town and home to U.S. military forces, Kaiserslautern faces a particularly high number of applications from foreign residents. The Foreigners’ Registration Office is currently responsible for approximately 24,000 people from 177 countries. Of these, more than 40 percent are associated with the university and the college. The high mobility among students, in particular, creates a significant administrative burden.

(Press release from the City of Kaiserslautern)