Zur the middle of the year, almost two million jobs were vacant in Germany – staff has never been so scarce. The FDP is now all the more pressing in the traffic light coalition to anchor a new points system based on the Canadian model in the planned reform of immigration law, so that more qualified people find their way here. “Canadian experience shows that more than 60 percent of immigrants are gained this way,” said FDP deputy chairman Johannes Vogel of the FAZ.
Experts understand self-organized immigration to mean an access route in which applicants have to meet a legally defined requirement profile based on local needs. In contrast to the previous German immigration law for skilled workers, however, they do not have to have a concrete employment contract in prospect. The basic idea is that anyone who is young, for example, and already speaks German well, should in any case be given the opportunity to try and prove themselves on the job market – without necessarily having to conduct contract negotiations with a German company from their home country . “Both pillars belong to a modern immigration law for skilled workers,” emphasizes Vogel, who is also parliamentary director of the FDP parliamentary group.
Cumbersome bureaucracy
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser and Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (both SPD) recently outlined the key points of their reform plans. However, the focus was on readjustments in the area of the first pillar, i.e. for applicants who have a firm prospect of an employment contract. They could therefore soon carry out the procedure for a regular residence permit for skilled workers to a large extent after their entry; that would alleviate the difficulty of having to communicate with German offices and recognition bodies from abroad. A recent analysis of the employers showed that even if the local company helps, many contract negotiations fail due to the inconvenience of German bureaucracy.
The FDP supports this reform approach, as Vogel emphasizes. “I think what the interior minister and the labor minister have presented as a first draft is good – the direction is right,” he assures. “But our role as FDP will also be to persistently explain on the way to a joint draft law why a point system is so important as a second pillar,” explains Vogel. The traffic light parties had also agreed in the coalition agreement that this second pillar should come. It says that a second pillar will be established with the introduction of a chance card based on a points system.
In concrete terms, various categories would be defined in which potential immigrants can collect points through favorable characteristics; whoever achieves the minimum number of points receives the opportunity card and may enter the country to look for work. Typically, good language skills and educational qualifications are rewarded with points – the latter all the more so in the case of qualifications in identified shortage occupations. In addition, there are more points for younger applicants than for older ones because they have a longer working life ahead of them.
