You can apply, yes, and don't forget to present your formal portfolio and/or business plan, proof of funds to support yourself for the duration, proof of German-equivalent health insurance, and a rental contract on an apartment. I believe you might also need at least a letter from a German company expressing an interest in hiring you as a freelancer. Unfortunately you cannot just show up at the Foreigner's Office, declare yourself a freelancer, and be issued a visa. They're notorious for being sticklers for details but I've not (yet) dealt with them directly.
That said, there's something in the Blue Card arrangement that allows one to come here for up to six months as a "job seeker". I believe that when doing that you need "only" provide evidence of self-support, a place to live, and insurance, that latter IIRC need not be conforming to German standards. Also IIRC this visa is non-renewable.
Yes, you should definitely have all of your ducks in a row before you go in, but they are willing to bend the rules on some things if you basically look like you're going to make it. Here's what you want to bring:
1. Proof of Health Insurance.
2. Rental Contract
3. As many contracts or letters of interest from businesses as possible. Particularly if these are in English, they don't scrutinize them too much. If you simply have an open engagement letter for some hourly rate, perhaps an estimated (but not guaranteed) number of hours, they will look kindly on this, even if it doesn't actually obligate the other party to ever pay you anything.
4. Business Plan. I would generally shade this on the low side. You will look better on your renewal if you exceed your projections. It does need to be at the very least about 18k EUR/yr.
5. Historical income, particularly from self-employment
6. Bank statements, any evidence of assets you can dig up. Print these out for a couple of years.
7. Any degrees and transcripts you have
8. Personal references.
9. Any professional awards, etc
10. If you're married, an official marriage certificate.
The main strategy here is to overwhelm them with paper. They love paper, particularly if it has some sort of official looking stamp on it. If you show up with 100-200 pages of documentation, you should be virtually guaranteed to get the visa.
If you are worried or want to increase your chances, hire a lawyer and have them show up with you. The immigration people seem to see you showing up with a lawyer as evidence of seriousness and professionalism.
I can say that I showed up with my wife, and unfortunately she didn't have any job offers when the appointment rolled around. Between our copious documentation and a lawyer present, they issued her visa without the (required) job offer.
I am German and I like to criticize the exact same issues when people talk about "targeted" immigration. The idea is that by putting all sorts of requirements on immigrants you can be more selective and get only the top people.
Turns out, we are already very good at attracting immigrants with an education and earning power above the national average, and every book and form you throw at immigrants only discourages the "wanted" immigrants. I also object to the discrimination between "wanted" and "unwanted" immigrants but that is another topic...
It seems to me that I've heard some complaints from within Germany that the Blue Card is not so much about getting the best talent, but in fact is about getting the cheapest talent. The salary requirements are quite low, and in my experience, startups in Berlin have their eyes on those requirements when they start talking to you about offers. I'm not sure about the source of the complaints, but I would imagine that native German talent is not too happy about having their compensation undercut by foreigners who might happily work for the Blue Card minimums in order to come here. Just my speculation. It would be not unlike the H1-B situation in the U.S.
The Blue Card has a salary minimum of 37.128€. That might not sound much, but I'd say this amount is far from "undercutting" entry-level salaries.
The problem with the theories about undercutting wages of "native talent" is that there is virtually no unemployed native talent.
Of course, all Germans believe they are paid too little. The only way wages would rise dramatically would be if employers went into a crazy competition mode, and they seem to know that this would be bad for every employer. Higher wages only serve to "steal" employees from another employer, they don't increase the work force per se.
There is no comprehensive way to tell if immigration lowers salaries, since you can't just add and subtract jobs in the complex system of a national economy. Also, I find it hard to justify any right for "native talent" to shut out "non-native talent". Both are human beings and there is no such thing as a birth-right to higher compensation.
Still, we NEED higher salaries in Germany. I've seen so many people waste away on stupid code that should never have been written. (Instead, how about using a framework that automates away 90% of grunt development?) Most of the time I'm working in projects that I could have written myself in months, and they have two-digits of developers working on it for years sometimes.
The incentives are exactly the opposite of what made Germany big in high-tech manufacturing. We treat developers as the mediocre, cheap code monkeys they often are (using the word "mediocre" so I don't have to swear on HN).
How would higher salaries make coding more productive? That seems to be an unwarranted assumption.
Developer productivity and project management is a large field. I sometimes feel that programmers, especially the idealistic ones, tend to overestimate their own performance, and underestimate the problems of project management.
Yeah, there's a lot of hoops you have to go through, but that also opens up your Schengen Area travel opportunities considerably (for duration at least) if I remember the details correctly.
Citizens of states that are party to the Schengen agreement can travel to any Shengen country without a visa for three months at a time out of every six. I have implicit Schengen status (US citizen) and as far as I know may travel within (Schengen) Europe without any particular permissions, certainly not from the Germany authorities, whoever they might be. In fact, spy agencies aside, the German authorities don't even know that I'm here. I got an entry stamp on my passport in Paris, and did nothing on arrival in Germany (TXL) other than collect my baggage and get a taxi. I'll get an exit stamp in Copenhagen on the way out.
In theory the schengen visa-free rule of 90 out of 180 days still applies if you're not in Germany. However, since nothing is getting stamped when you cross a border, it would not normally be possible for them to prove that you stayed in a non-german country for more than 90 days.
However if you get the self-employment visa, you have residency status in Germany and are no longer under those restrictions (and thus have nothing to worry about crossing borders) for the duration of the visa.
This does not necessarily limit you to just one year - you can get up to a 3 year visa issued on the spot, and this can be extended as each visa period elapses, just as long as you can demonstrate that you have income and business activity.
I'm an Aussie expat in Berlin since November 2012 - you can apply for a working holiday visa if you're under 30, follow up with a self-employment visa, or if you want to work for a start-up, the visa process is ridiculously easy.
The U.S is the pathological case when it comes to visas.
I'm Australian, and on top of what atroyn said, you also have the option for a "blue card" (http://www.bluecard-eu.de/eu-blue-card-germany/) if you're a full-time employee somewhere. It's super easy to get, and it's quite liberal.
