Germany is the absolute leader among EU countries in attracting highly qualified specialists
Who received the Blue Card
As Deutsche Welle notes, since August 1, 2012, foreign specialists in Germany have been able to apply for a Blue Card. Today, the trend is quite clear: the number of foreigners who have obtained a Blue Card is growing every year. In 2013, Germany issued 11,290 Blue Cards; in 2015, already 14,468. The latest processed data for the first three quarters of 2016 shows 13,166 Blue Card recipients.
According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge), the most applications came from India: almost a quarter of the issued cards went to specialists from that country. In second place is China. In third and fourth are Russia and Ukraine.
Conditions for issuing a Blue Card
The Blue Card is the European equivalent of the American Green Card. Citizens of non-EU countries can apply for it if they have a German degree or a degree recognized in the EU. Through the online database of the Central Office for Foreign Education (Zentralstelle für Ausländisches Bildungswesen, ZAB), you can check whether your education is recognized in Europe. If there is no information in the database, the diploma must be sent to ZAB for an individual paid expert assessment. The result must be presented at the embassy to obtain a visa (the Blue Card is issued on site, in Germany or another EU country).
In addition, the second main condition is having an employment contract. This can be a full-time or part-time contract, but not a Minijob (which is 450 euros per month). The Blue Card is a tool that, politicians hope, will help solve the problem of staff shortages. It is intended for qualified specialists. Therefore, there is another important condition for obtaining a Blue Card: the annual salary must be at least 50,800 euros before taxes. For the most sought-after specialists, which include mathematicians, natural scientists, doctors, and IT specialists, the threshold is slightly lower – 39,624 euros.
More and more "new arrivals"
Staff shortages are characteristic of the German labor market as a whole, but there are regional differences in the implementation of the strategy to attract foreign specialists. According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, the most Blue Cards were issued in North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, and Baden-Württemberg.
The right to apply for a Blue Card was used by specialists already working in Germany, as well as by students who completed their studies and found a job. It should be noted here that experts' fears that the expected influx of foreign specialists would not materialize have not been confirmed. While in about the first year of the program's operation, just over 2,500 people entered Germany under the simplified Blue Card employment scheme, and 70 percent of Blue Card holders already lived in Germany and received the card instead of another residence permit, by 2016 the situation looked quite different: "new arrivals" already exceeded half of the total number of Blue Card recipients.