There is a joker in Csilla Rostas’ everyday work, it is called: accelerated skilled worker process, Paragraph 81a in the Residence Act. When the wheels of the German authorities grind slowly again, the lawyer tries to bring foreign skilled workers to Germany in this way. Fast forward bureaucracy, so to speak – many employers who are urgently looking for employees are happy to pay an extra 411 euros in administration fees. But this year Rostas had to learn that speeding up doesn’t always happen where the state promises.
In February she submitted an application for two Indian engineers whose expertise was needed for a project at a company in the west of the Republic. It was March, she asked, it was April, she didn’t hear anything, it was August at some point, a colleague complained. Shortly afterwards, one interested party received his visa and was able to start. It took too long for the other person; he had lost interest in the meantime and canceled. Rostas comments steadfastly: “I learned from this that it doesn’t make sense to use the accelerated procedure in every municipality.” In some places the conventional route is faster. Or less slowly, more accurately.
And with that, welcome to Germany, a country of immigration.
The economist Monika Schnitzer calculated in the SZ in the summer: A net immigration of 400,000 people is needed in this country every year so that the work required can be done in clinics, on machines and in front of computers. In the first half of 2022, companies were unable to fill around 45 percent of the vacancies for skilled workers. The shows a study from the Institute for Labor Market and Vocational Research from November.
Germany as a “dysfunctional bureaucracy”
Csilla Rostas has made it her mission to change that. She has been working for IRC, a relocation agency from Berlin, for a year and a half. These service providers support companies in bringing suitable skilled workers from abroad to Germany for specific positions. But you also work directly for people who want to live and work here. Rostas is originally from Hungary and has only been living in Germany for three years. Before that, she worked for a long time in Brussels in the EU environment. You could say she knows her way around bureaucracies. When she talks about Germany, she puts another adjective in front of it: This country is sometimes a “dysfunctional bureaucracy” when it comes to dealing with immigrants, she says. And he sounds more surprised than angry.
It usually starts in the home countries of the potential newcomers. Anyone who comes from a third country, i.e. not from an EU country like Rostas, needs a visa to enter and work. “But in the German consulates in many countries, people sometimes have to wait months for an appointment,” the lawyer repeatedly states. This is the case in Turkey, for example, and in Tunisia too. These are months in which positions in this country remain unfilled and work piles up – and months in which the software engineer from Izmir may sooner or later google “Work in Canada”. It’s supposed to be nice there too.
The processes often take a long time, not only in the consulates abroad, but also in Germany. Rostas mainly contacts the immigration authorities there at a later point in time, for example to apply for a residence permit or to have professional qualifications recognized. Here, too, she experiences long waiting times – as in the case of the two Indians, where the accelerated procedure turned out to be quite stuttering. “It’s part of my job to wait for weeks for answers from the authorities, to ask questions, to get no answer and to ask again,” says Rostas.
The immigration authorities are overwhelmed
In autumn documented a survey by researchers from the universities in Hildesheim and Duisburg-Essen about the excessive demands placed on German immigration authorities: 92 percent of the 90 office representatives surveyed stated that their workload had increased significantly in recent years. Far too few qualified staff for far too much work, unanswered emails, so many calls that it is impossible to respond to everyone: the frustration is also great among the people in the offices, the study suggests. Where the shortage of skilled workers is to be solved, there is also a lack of sufficient staff.
But the scientists criticize another, fundamental problem: They describe immigration policy in this country as “Janus-faced”, somewhere “between a shortage of skilled workers and immigration control.” With the slogan “Make it in Germany” the country is on the one hand recruiting workers from abroad, while at the same time politicians are pondering the question of how life can be made a little less comfortable for refugees than is currently the case. The people in the immigration authorities usually take care of the concerns of both groups at the same time. “The authorities in Germany are primarily designed to examine applications and not to advise on them,” says Axel Plünnecke, who researches the migration of skilled workers at the German Economic Institute (IW) in Cologne. He thinks: “A little more service orientation would be helpful.”
That’s what Csilla Rostas thinks too when she receives an application for a residence permit rejected weeks later because the shades of gray in the copy of the proof of work provided did not meet the authorities’ expectations. Or, unlike in the neighboring municipality, the office values a certified translation of the university diploma. Everything has happened before, she says, and not just once. “I have to research for each municipality individually what documents are needed there,” she says. If you talk to representatives of other relocation companies, it sounds similar: They also want more uniform requirements and checklists across municipalities and states as to which documents they have to submit. “More consistency instead of chaos,” says one, and: more staff. They are currently experiencing frustration from all sides – from impatient companies and foreign skilled workers, but also from the people in the overburdened authorities, with whom they have to follow up again and again.
A new law is intended to make it easier for skilled workers to come to Germany
There are certainly good approaches, says Csilla Rostas. In Berlin, if she wants to bring a skilled worker into the country directly for a specific company, she can use the so-called Business Immigration Service. It’s not for nothing that this place has the word “service” in its name, praises Rostas; the people there usually react quickly to applications, pay attention to consistent processes and answer questions. “More facilities like this would be a big help,” she says.
The new Skilled Immigration Act, which gradually came into force in November, also promises easier integration of qualified people from third countries. This means, for example, that experienced IT specialists from abroad without a specific qualification in this area are also allowed to work in this country. It will also make it easier for people from non-EU countries to bring their families to Germany, provided they can provide for their livelihood. The so-called Opportunity card, which is based on a points system, should make it possible for people from third countries to look for a job in Germany for the first time over the next year. Anyone who has successfully applied for one will receive a residence permit for a maximum of one year. An idea that Axel Plünnecke from IW Cologne thinks makes sense. There are already 120,000 people from third countries working in academic MINT professions in this country – four times as many as ten years ago. “They all have contacts in their home countries, where friends, acquaintances and former colleagues could benefit from the opportunity card in the future,” says Plünnecke.
But they also have to fill out applications and they will also have to wait for an appointment with the authorities. “The best law doesn’t help much if the problems in the processes are not solved,” says Csilla Rostas. She shouldn’t run out of work any time soon.
The next episode of the SZ series “Germany, what’s up?” will be published on Wednesday, December 27th, 2023. All episodes at: sz.de/location.