The government in Berlin intends to create the most modern immigration regulation in Europe.

The German economy is still failing to solve the problem of labor shortages, and the government hopes it will at least somewhat ease it by liberalizing immigration.

As reported by the Financial Times, Labor Minister Hubertus Heil said that Germany will create “one of the most modern immigration regimes in Europe” in order to ease the worker shortage that has become “a real brake on economic growth”.

Desperate search

Minister Heil points out that immigration reform is part of the broader campaign of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government aimed at attracting talented workers from all over the world, easing the impact of unfavorable demographic trends, and enabling an inflow of a sufficient number of qualified workers, which has become the leading problem for some of Europe's largest companies.

In an interview with the FT, Heil said that in many sectors of German industry there is a “desperate” search for workers, and the situation will only get worse in the future, given that the baby boomer generation is slowly retiring.

“Germany will be short of 7 million workers by 2035 if we do not do something,” Heil said. “And that can ultimately become a real brake on our economic growth,” added the minister in charge of the labor portfolio. The amended immigration regulation, which the Bundestag is expected to approve in the next few weeks, will remove a good part of the existing barriers to immigration and the employment of foreigners in Germany.

For example, foreigners will be able to get a job even if they do not have professional qualifications according to German standards, Heil explained. “It will be enough for them to have an employment contract with a German employer, some work experience, and to have completed vocational education in their own country,” the minister added.

Germany will also introduce “opportunity cards” that will allow immigrants to collect points based on their vocational education and work experience, knowledge of the German language, and being under the age of 35.

“Anyone who has enough points will be able to come to Germany to look for a job,” said Heil, who has held that ministerial position since 2018. Another law that will soon be sent into parliamentary procedure will make it easier for foreigners to obtain German citizenship.

Still too bureaucratic

Some employers' associations believe that the proposed reform does not go deep enough. The immigration procedure “is still too bureaucratic,” assesses Thilo Brodtmann from the VDMA metal industry association. “The requirement for knowledge of the German language is still too broad,” Brodtmann believes. According to the latest quarterly survey by the European Commission, the shortage of workers limits the performance of 42 percent of German companies in the service sector, 34 percent of industrial companies, and a third of construction firms.

That is not surprising given the number of unfilled jobs. Research by the local Economic Institute showed that last year the number of jobs for which companies could not find a qualified worker reached a record 630,000. Just for illustration, a year earlier 280,000 jobs remained unfilled.

Economic analysts believe that the labor shortage also contributed to the recent wave of strikes that paralyzed the railway network and some of the country's largest airports. Inflation and rising living costs were the main triggers for the strikers' dissatisfaction, but the shortage of workers gave the already powerful German unions a little more “ammunition” in putting pressure on employers and the government.

Minister Heil points out that in this reform of immigration laws the government wants to avoid the mistakes made during the 1960s when a huge wave of foreign workers arrived in Germany – the famous “gastarbajteri” – but whom German society did not fully accept for years. “We did not help them integrate,” says Heil, adding that immigrants “are not just workers.” “They li

ve to be part of society, with all the rights and obligations as others,” Heil concludes.

Source: poslovni.hr