Germany plans to widely recruit skilled workers from India in a bid to close the skills gap, Labor Minister Hubertus Heil said on Monday on the sidelines of a cricket match with Indians in Berlin.
Indians’ path to Germany will be eased with more than 30 measures to reduce bureaucratic hurdles in issuing visas to Indians.
Heil’s strategy outlines how skills bottlenecks are holding back growth and progress in Germany. The consequences of an aging society will become even greater without immigration, the report says.
“In India, the situation is exactly the opposite,” the report says. “There, highly educated age groups from high birth years are confronted with a labor market with only limited capacity to absorb them.”
Heil said, “In India, a million people are joining the labor market every month.” The Indian government was promoting migration, he said. “For this reason, Germany sees India as a particularly important partner when it comes to the immigration of skills,” Heil said.
Heil said the German Foreign Ministry would digitalize the issuance of visas – for India by the end of the year and for other countries afterward to avoid delays.
The German language will also be promoted more. And Indians already in Germany need to be better integrated, for example with help finding work.
Heil said the government will present its skills strategy at the German-Indian government consultations in India next week.
“We will do this for the Indian audience as well,” he said.
