The shortage of skilled workers in this country has already brought thousands of foreign nurses to Germany – for example from Mexico. The federal government is also recruiting skilled workers in other countries. With success?
The weather, the food, the language: Herbert Otoniel Pérez Victoriano from Mexico couldn’t cope with these things when he came to Germany from an indigenous village in sunny Oaxaca.
For more than four years, the nurse has been working at the Berlin Charité, at the ventilation station with a focus on infectiology and pneumology – as one of hundreds of Mexican nurses who have now come to Germany.
The then Minister of Health Jens Spahn (CDU) campaigned for her in Mexico four years ago in view of the shortage of skilled workers in Germany. Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) was also in Latin America for the same reason – in Brazil. On Monday he travels to India. It should also be about IT specialists.
Accompaniment as the key to integration
In his spare time, Pérez Victoriano shares experiences and information with other Spanish-speaking caregivers who want to emigrate to Germany on a Facebook blog.
“So far I can say that reality has exceeded my personal expectations,” says the 32-year-old of the German Press Agency. “But I also met colleagues who were cheated by private placement companies or who came to Germany and didn’t get what they were promised.” A key to the successful integration of foreign nursing staff is support from the receiving institution.
The hardest part is the language, says Pérez Victoriano, who completed a five-year degree in nursing in Mexico. “We work in a profession that involves speaking a lot – educating the sick person, maybe admonishing them or giving instructions on how to operate a medical device. It can be a bit frustrating when you have the knowledge but can’t express yourself. “
Patient Protection Foundation: Cost-benefit analysis is missing
At the beginning of June, Labor Minister Heil visited a training facility at the Catholic University of Brasília (UCB) in Brazil and signed a declaration of intent for “fair immigration” with his Brazilian colleague Luiz Marinho. Structures are to be simplified in order to promote the exchange of skilled workers. The Federal Employment Agency (BA) considers the recruitment of up to 700 nursing staff per year to be possible.
The German Patient Protection Foundation is skeptical. “The state recruitment of foreign nurses has been a flop for decades,” says board member Eugen Brysch. A cost-benefit analysis is missing. It is overdue for all expenditure to be checked by the Federal Court of Auditors. With a view to the 44,000 registered unemployed nurses last year, Brysch added that the homework in this country had to be done first.
Nevertheless, according to the chairman of the board of the German Hospital Society, Gerald Gass, it would not be possible without immigration. “At least 31,000 positions cannot currently be filled in general and intensive care in the hospitals. Without foreign nurses, this number would be much higher,” says the former hospital manager. Significantly less bureaucracy is needed for recognition, visa issuance and many other hurdles.
“We leave our life here behind”
The nurses Iris Amora (28) and Alessandro Gomes (33) are currently learning German in an intensive course in Rio de Janeiro in order to prepare for their new jobs in Germany. From the end of July they should work in the Helios Park Clinic in Leipzig. The difficult working conditions and low salaries in Brazil made her take the step. “It’s very tiring to have to take care of patients without adequate resources and supplies,” says Amora. “Because the cost of living in Brazil is very high and we don’t earn well, most nurses also have more than one job.”
You and Gomes would never have left Brazil. “It’s also a big change. We’re leaving our lives here to go to a place where we don’t know anyone,” says Gomes. Although they knew that nursing staff in Germany did not get particularly high salaries, they hoped for a better quality of life than in Brazil in terms of education, security and local public transport. “We want to take our chance.”
There is one thing that Germany shouldn’t do, no matter how hard it tries, says Gass, head of the hospital company: poaching skilled workers from other countries with the same demographic challenges. Björn Gruber from GIZ assures us with regard to the Triple Win recruitment program: “The Federal Employment Agency and the Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) only hire nurses if the state partners in the countries of origin agree, whereby the labor market situation in the country of origin is taken into account .” According to the professional association Confen, there are around 2.5 million nurses in Brazil. The unemployment rate in the sector was over ten percent in 2021.
Crisis-proof job
At the end of 2021, 236,000 foreign nursing professionals were employed in Germany subject to social security contributions, according to a response from the federal government to a question in the Bundestag last year. The majority of foreign nurses come from Europe. In the same year, 2,109 nurses came to Germany from Brazil and 652 from Mexico.
Basically, according to Gass, a different tone is needed in the debate about the shortage of skilled workers in nursing: “In general, we have to communicate to the public that nursing is a demanding, fulfilling and meaningful profession that is absolutely crisis-proof and is now also well paid . Constant negative reports or even completely false distorted images of starvation wages are counterproductive.”