24 annual report 2010 A problem arose because the Immigration Service did not reply to the Ministry’s request or its subsequent reminders. The case came to a standstill. As the Ministry had not received a statement from the Immigration Service, it could not start its investigation of the case. In September 2009, the man had had enough and lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman. He wrote that it was completely unacceptable that the Ministry of Integration could not get a statement from the Immigration Service and he found it unfair that his case was not being processed. We contacted the Ministry and were informed that it had sent the Immigration Service five reminders of its request for a statement, with no success. We decided to enter the case and received an explanation from both the Immigration Service and the Ministry. The Immigration Service admitted that the Ministry’s request for a statement had remained unanswered for six months. It recognised that this was completely unacceptable, and both the Immigration Service and the Ministry expressed extreme regret. In addition, the Immigration Service reprimanded the relevant employee and sent the man a letter of apology. The Immigration Service also promised the Ministry that it would reconsider the man’s case. The Ministry therefore returned the case to the Immigration Service and asked for it to be processed quickly. The Ombudsman later expressed criticism of both the Immigration Service and the Ministry. As far as the man was concerned, the Ombudsman case was now settled. However, it also helped to improve the future case processing by the immigration authorities, as it caused the Immigration Service to promise, among other things, that the deadlines for submitting statements to the Ministry would in future be met. In addition, the Immigration Service asked the Ministry to send any reminders of statement requests directly to its senior management. Furthermore, a meeting between the Immigration Service and the Ministry resulted in the preparation of detailed shared guidelines for processing requests from the Ministry in complaint cases etc. The guidelines came into force in early 2010. AN URGENT CASE WHICH WAS NOT PROCESSED A Somali man lodged a complaint about the Immigration Service, which was taking far too long to decide on his wife’s family reunification case. We submitted the case to the Ministry of Integration as the appeal authority. The Ministry criticised the case processing by the Immigration Service and in March 2009 asked for the case to be processed quickly. In September 2009, the man wrote again to the Ombudsman to report that the Immigration Service still had not