As of July 1, the telephone hours of case handlers and lawyers will be discontinued.

Questions will be answered during the Directorate’s opening hours:

Monday to Thursday between 9 and 14

Fridays between 9 and 12

If necessary, messages will be given to case handlers or lawyers who will return the call.

Please note that only the applicant himself or his authorized representative can get information about an application‘s status or other information related to an application. A spouse is not automatically an authorized representative.

The Directorate of Immigration hopes that the changes will shorten our customers’ wait for answers and improve the Directorate’s services.

The residence permit team is now busy processing applications for residence permits for students for the next school year.

How long will it take to process your application?

The Directorate tries to process all applications before the beginning of the semester but we can only guarantee for the timely processing of applications submitted with all required supporting documents before June 1st.

Please note that contacting the Directorate per E-Mail or telephone to check the status of your application will not accelerate the processing of your applications. On the opposite, it might delay the processing since the same staff is responsible for answering such inquiries and processing applications. We will contact you if any documents are insufficient and when your residence permit is granted.

You can check which applications are already being processed on our web's processing time page. If you submitted your application later than the displayed date, your application has not been processed yet.

What can you do to accelerate the processing of your application?

• Make sure you submit all the necessary supporting documents with your application, a list of the required supporting documents is available here. 

• Make sure the supporting documents you submit meet the Directorate’s documentation requirements. 

In particular, make sure the criminal record certificate you submit was issued by the highest authority competent to issue such certificates in the respective country. The certificate must state that the information in the certificate stems from national databases, not only databases in certain areas (for example, in certain regions or states of a country). For students from the US this means that an FBI criminal record certificate is required, students from Canada must submit an RCMP certificate and students from Thailand must submit a certificate issued by the Royal Thai Police

• Make sure your means of support is satisfactory and that you submit sufficient documentation on your secure means of support. 

The Directorate of Immigration will be open between 8:30 and 11:00 Friday April 12 due to a staff meeting.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Between April 8 and April 16, both dates included, there will be limited telephone services for questions regarding residence permits based on family reunification.

Regular telephone services of case handlers in the residence permit team will not take place but urgent calls will be answered on the same day.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.

Please note that all general questions can be sent by e-mail to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.