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IMMIGRATION

German minister vows to ‘learn from Canada’ on immigration

Visiting Canada this week, German Labour Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) said he wanted to take inspiration from how the country had dealt with a previous lack of skilled immigration.

Published: 20 March 2023 11:01 CET

The Canadian flag flies at Peace Tower in Ottawa, Canada. Photo: picture alliance / Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press/AP/dpa | Adrian Wyld

In February, the German government published its new draft Skilled Worker Immigration Act – a raft of reforms aimed at attracting more workers to Germany to help plug its huge worker gap. Currently, around 400,000 new workers are needed each year to compensate for the shortfall.

With the plans soon expected to be approved by the federal cabinet, two of the principal architects of the draft bill – Interior Minister Nancy Faeser and Labour Minister Hubertus Heil – are visiting Canada to take inspiration from the country’s highly successful immigration policy.

No other country in the world – in relation to the number of inhabitants – has a stronger immigration of labour and skilled workers than Canada.

“We want to learn how they do it,” said Heil.

The ministers plan to exchange ideas with Canadian government representatives, companies and experts on the planned reform of the Skilled Worker Immigration Act.

Heil said he hoped the visit would give him a “look into the ‘engine room’ of the Canadian system – also to take good examples and suggestions back to Germany”.

Canada as a role model

Sixty years ago Canada was struggling with a severe worker shortage similar to the current situation in Germany. To combat this, the government changed immigration policy and developed a points system, based on the principle of bringing those who have the best qualifications for occupations with current shortfalls into the country.

Germany wants to follow this example with the introduction of a points-based system and the Chancenkarte, or “Opportunity Card”, for people who want to look for a job in Germany.

As well as education, the Canadian points system also takes age, language skills and work experience into account. Applicants via the Canadian points system can collect up to 100 points across these categories, and those who reach 67 are granted a permanent residence permit.

Under the new plans, people will be able to come to Germany for up to a year in order to look for work – even without a job offer – if they earn enough points in the following categories, among others:

Age
Connection to Germany
Work experience
Language skills

‘Oversupply’ needed for a points system

The opposition CDU/CSU, meanwhile, have been pouring cold water on the hopes of learning from Canada.

Hermann Gröhe, vice chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, told the Rhenische Post that he is not convinced that a points system would be as successful in Germany as it is in Canada. According to Gröhe, for a points system to work, an oversupply of qualified immigrants is needed.

Instead of making “educational trips to Canada”, he said Germany needs to concentrate on making itself “more attractive” and creating a “welcoming climate” for migrants.

CDU labour expert Ottilie Klein told German news outlet RND, that the ministers should be concentrating on “the real hurdles to the immigration of skilled workers”, such as the need for more staff in immigration offices and reducing bureaucratic hurdles, by digitising procedures, for example.

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With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced on Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.