Germany to ease threshold for high-skills immigrants
Expatica News
4 August 2006
BERLIN – Berlin is to make entry easier for high-salary foreigners offered jobs in Germany, a government spokeswoman said in Berlin Friday, after the existing high-skills plan flopped.
Germany offers fast-track work visas to anyone winning a job with annual pay of at least 84,000 euros (107,500 dollars) or offering to employ 10 people. But only 900 people benefited from the scheme last year, a newspaper, the Ruhr Nachrichten, reported Friday.
The paper said there was a consensus in the German ruling coalition to lower these thresholds.
The spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry said the new thresholds had not yet been decided.
Marianne Demmer, a spokeswoman for the teachers' trade union GEW, said the existing pay threshold was so high that not even the salary of a university professor was enough to qualify.
Fast-track status means German labour authorities have no veto over the visa. Wives and children gain automatic entry.
