Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil and Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser are traveling through beautiful Canada this week. Not for vacation, of course. There they ask Indian electrical engineers, Iranians and Albanians why they didn’t prefer to emigrate to Germany. Because Germany also needs more workers from abroad to meet the growing shortage of staff. All experts agree on that.
The problem: The Federal Republic is not nearly as popular with foreign professionals as, say, immigrant darling Canada. In addition to language barriers, the reasons for this include bureaucratic hurdles, for example in the recognition of professional qualifications and naturalization, as well as the much-cited “welcome culture”.
A survey by the organization Internations shows the settling-in problems experienced by skilled workers who come to Germany to work. The Munich-based company networks expats worldwide – well-qualified specialists who live and work abroad – and asked 12,000 of them how well they found their way around in the respective host country. The results result in a ranking of 52 countries – and Germany comes in 52nd place.
In no other country in the ranking did expats find it so difficult to start with as in this country. The categories language, housing, digital infrastructure and administration were queried. And with that some of the problem issues that the two German ministers* are repeatedly smeared on their bread on their tour of Canada.
According to the survey, a key factor is the language barrier: Although 59 percent of expats say that they can speak German well to very well, in the other countries only 53 percent say this about the respective national language. However, without sufficient language skills, according to the survey, it is much more difficult in Germany than elsewhere. The statement of a survey participant from Romania is representative of this. She says: “The Germans are prejudiced if you don’t speak German well enough, especially in the offices.”
In German authorities, expats not only encounter language barriers. Another annoyance for many is the inadequate digitization of the administration. Every third expat in Germany rates this point negatively, in other countries it is only every fifth. “I’m often surprised how far Germany lags behind other countries in terms of the availability of online services, card payments and administrative procedures that can be done online in other countries,” says a Brit.
Many emigrants consider the digital infrastructure in Germany to be highly expandable, even outside of the authorities. “Credit cards are almost never accepted in Germany, and the Internet connections are bad,” complains an Italian. No individual opinion: almost nowhere else do expats rate the option of cashless payment worse (51st place out of 52). When it comes to easy access to fast internet, things don’t look much better (49th place).
The German housing market is also a problem for many immigrants. Despite the high proportion of academics among those surveyed, 59 percent stated that apartments were hardly affordable and 56 percent said that housing was difficult to find at all. “The housing shortage here is a real problem, as is the constant increase in rents while wages are not increasing at the same rate,” explains a Ukrainian-born study participant. On this point at least, immigrants and natives should be able to speak the same language.
To be fair, it has to be said that the ranking only refers to a few everyday problems, especially for academic professionals. Other quite important points such as democracy, welfare and rule of law are left out here. Not only Canada, which is a role model, landed in the top spots, but also autocratic states such as Qatar, which has been widely criticized for its dealings with guest workers (see table).
one.
Bahrain
2.
United Arab Emirates
3.
Singapore
4.
Estonia
5.
My own
6.
Indonesia
7.
Saudi Arabian
8.
Train
9.
Kenya
10.
Canada
…
48.
Italy
49.
Kuwait
50.
China
51.
Japan
52.
Germany
Source: Internations – Expat Insider 2022; 11,970 expats with 177 different nationalities were surveyed
