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Germany needs skilled workers. Yet bureaucracy and discrimination are driving temporary migrants away
- Overseas workers say they do not always feel welcome in Germany, and many leave for bureaucratic reasons
- Two out of three highly qualified professionals from non-European countries said they had experienced discrimination in Germany
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Raymund Guevara worked as a nurse in a hospital in the German state of Lower Saxony for five years. Since January, the 37-year-old Filipino has now been living with his wife in Florida, in the United States.
“We wanted to make our dream come true,” he says on the phone. Buying a house, he says, proved very difficult in Germany, not least because of the mortgage. In Florida, he receives state support due to his job.
Getting a driving licence or a residence permit is also more complicated in Germany, not to mention learning the language. “In the US, we have more options, and it’s more comfortable to live.”
Nurses like Guevara are urgently needed in Germany. And they are not alone. According to an analysis by the German Employment Agency, there is a shortage of skilled workers in one in six professions across the country.
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This is why the government is reforming the skilled labour migration law, which aims to make it easier for workers from abroad to come to Germany.
The problem is that they don’t just have to come to Germany – they have to want to stay. At least for a while.
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“Temporary migration is on the rise,” says Herbert Brücker of the Institute for Employment Research in Nuremberg, southern Germany. That’s because transport has become cheaper, while the technology to research travel and stay in touch with family is more advanced.
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