The German Green Card!
Germany has recently announced a program to attract foreigner workers and as soon as the news was released the comparison with the popular counterpart american one was on the spot. So much so that the official name of the program in Germany is: Chancenkarte, literally an opportunity card but the nickname of German green card had already taken off.
My goal here is to analyse in more detail what exactly the Germans are offering to foreigner workers and what the American green card is.
It is not a big secret that some of the developed nations are facing the same problem, labour shortage. Germans are trying to tackle the problem with foreigner workers. If it is something that Covid has done to global commerce it is a huge disruption in the productive chain, especially for products that come from China. The developed nations had realised that they can’t rely on overseas productions and be jeopardised for another pandemic with inflation on their internal economy. Why am I talking about inflation, because increase in production, labour shortage and inflation are tied together.
Inflation in simple terms is when prices rise, everyone is familiar with that right? The problem is inflation has basic two causes, one is the offer of money available to the population that can easily buy more, but also when an economy has scarce products it can lead to increase the demand for few products and also increase the price.
It seems that Germany and the US are facing the second cause, lack of products, ok I know that the crisis in Ukraine has its impact on the economy as well. I will just not consider that factor now to make things easier.
With all that being said Germans intend to fight for their economy given opportunities to foreign workers. In Germany’s proposal, the “green card” is a temporary visa to qualified workers to go to Germany and look for jobs, which is not exactly like that in the US.
I will make a comparison here to make things easy to understand. First of all, the German option is temporary, which means that the visa can lead to permanent residency instead in the US the green card is already the permanent residency. Who goes to the US with the GC will be allowed to live permanently in the country.
Germans are requiring language skills from applicants who have lived in the country before. In the American green card there is no language requirement, but applicants are encouraged to speak English otherwise it will be hard to communicate efficiently in the work environment.
Considering the temporary visa in Germany the country is allowing workers to move over there without a job offer in hand, which doesn’t happen in the US. The process in the US is based on a job offer, previously approved by the Department of Labor.
Education, this is an important part, Germans are aiming for qualified workers with university’s degrees, professional qualification and professional experience. On qualification the US original green card is more flexible, they have three categories, basic unskilled workers that do not require any specific qualification, skilled worker, where qualification and or training is needed and professionals with college and university degrees are mandatory.
Finally, the age limit. Clearly Germans want to attract young people for that reason they have limited their visa to 35 years old, when the Americans are more open and flexible without age limit, but there is a caveat immigration agents are allowed to subjectively deny an EB-3 application if they understand that the applicant will not be able to perform the job tasks.
In a nutshell I hope I could provide further information and educate those that are thinking if the German green card is a good option or if it is better to go with the original American green card. So far the Germans haven’t implemented the visa option and are still debating on a political level.
Tom
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