Welcome Casey, Molly, and Clara to Germany

We have some exciting news: we are now officially permanent residents in Germany!

We came to Berlin 5 years ago thinking we'd spend a summer in Berlin, party a bit, and then go back home to San Francisco. But, as you know, that's not quite what happened. We made some great friends, we learned a new language, we bought a nice apartment, and a tiny little human named Clara moved in with us. In September 2020, the German government decided we could stay as long as we wanted. Hooray! Prost! Herzlich willkommen! Und so weiter.

The thing is, throughout this whole process, we have gotten the best possible treatment. Of course we needed to follow all kinds of annoying rules. Of course it hasn't always been easy to manage all the bureaucracy. But people have been incredibly nice, helpful, and forgiving towards us from day one. We never once worried that we might not be allowed to stay in Germany. Whenever there was any room for interpretation, we got the benefit of the doubt.

Why? You already know why. Because we're an educated white American cisgender hetero couple with money and good jobs. Because living in another country was always a matter of choice for us, never a matter of economic need, or of life and death.

As we walked out of the Einwanderungsamt, newly minted permanent residents of Germany, we decided to do our best to redistribute a bit of that privilege. If you are happy that we are here, please help us even the playing field, so that others can also make a home in Germany – a home that many people need much, much more urgently than we do.

The organization Kontakt und Beratungsstelle für Flüchtlinge und Migrant_innen e.V. offers legal advice, translated forms, language courses, and more for fellow immigrants in Berlin-Kreuzberg. We hope you'll join our celebration by supporting them. And, once we see each other again, a glass of Sekt is on us. <3