- 56.1 per cent of German citizens would like to facilitate the influx of IT professionals from outside the EU
- eco Association calls for swift reform of citizenship law
The German federal government should facilitate the immigration of IT professionals from outside the EU. Over half (56 per cent) of German citizens are in favour of this, according to a representative Civey survey commissioned by eco – Association of the Internet Industry. 30.5 per cent of German citizens are against it, 13.4 per cent are undecided.
“The shortage of skilled workers poses growing challenges for many companies in the tech industry,” states Lucia Falkenberg, CPO and spokesperson of the New Work Competence Group in the eco Association. “We, therefore, need a reform of the skilled workers immigration law now. The reform proposals presented in November 2022 in a Position Paper by the “traffic light” coalition are overdue. For the ongoing process of digital transformationj, Germany urgently needs skilled workers from abroad, because the competition for the best minds is raging worldwide.”
Current figures prove the urgent need for action: At the end of 2022, Germany lacked a record number1 of around 326,000 MINT (mathematics, informatics, science, technology) specialists. The German federal government has set itself the task of speeding up the procedures for skilled worker immigration and presented a corresponding Position Paper in November 2022. It aims to adapt the Skilled Workers Immigration Act, which will come into force in 2020, in order to be able to recruit skilled workers from countries outside the European Economic Area more quickly and easily.
IT specialists of every qualification level are urgently needed, says Falkenberg: “We need an immigration and citizenship law that enables not only the particularly highly qualified people from abroad to take up jobs in the IT and Internet industry in Germany promptly without major bureaucratic hurdles.”
