Selling a different green card

By K. V. Krishnaswamy

BERLIN: Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is. This German proverb kept coming back to mind as I sought out initial political reaction to the German Government's green card scheme, a bold new initiative to attract information technology professionals from abroad.

The scheme naturally provoked a mixed reaction in a nation that continues to grapple with xenophobia after having had to import manpower for reconstruction following the devastation of World War II. ``Kinder, statt Inder'' - children, not Indians - was the immediate response at home, from an Opposition Christian Democrat politician. This as well as the slogan ``more training for Germans, not more immigrants'' reflected ignorance of the basic fact which prompted the Schroeder Government to launch the initiative: that Germany has fallen behind other developed countries in the area of communications and information technology.

The scheme meant acknowledging the uncomfortable reality of a German dependence on immigrant labour, though of a qualitatively different nature, and the Government has had to tread carefully, as admitted by the Social Democrat member of Parliament and party spokesman on the foreigners' issue, Mr. Sebastian Edathy. The energetic, young MP, whose father hails from Kottayam in Kerala and who visited the State last year and looks forward to coming to India again early next year, was confident that his Government would overcome the initial resistance. He was hopeful that the scheme would prove attractive.

The initial hostility has apparently died down, though at the political level, the battle is yet to be won. The Government, for its part, has been pushing the scheme vigorously. The primary objective is to attract IT specialists to fill a large skilled manpower gap. As per the original programme, up to 10,000 work permits are being issued to foreign information and communications technology specialists, and there is provision for doubling this number to 20,000 on review and re-assessment. The permit holders can bring their families in and work for a maximum of five years when the permit will expire and they will be obliged to return home. Again, spouses, regardless of their qualification, will remain housewives for two years when they can seek a work permit of their own and take up a job.

The Government, obviously not wanting to fuel an anti- immigrant hysteria, explicitly declared that its own scheme billed as the ``emergency programme of the Federal Government and the information and communications industry'' was not to be mistaken for the American green card which entitles the holder to U.S. citizenship.

The German version had limited scope, intended to serve a limited national purpose. Germany will not encourage the specialists to become entrepreneurs or live on in Germany.

The Government has made clear that the scheme will be restricted to the IT sector and not be extended to other sectors of the economy.

The procedure for grant of the work permit as listed out in official documents makes interesting reading. The Arbeitsamt or employment office which scrutinises the applications for work permit checks whether the job position sought ``cannot be filled by a German or European Union specialist'', whether the applicant's qualifications are adequate and whether the German employer will provide the same salary and working conditions as for qualified German specialists.

It must be too early to assess the response to the initiative, announced in January, launched in April and effective from August. That the jobs market in these specialist fields is expanding fast was evident from statistical details provided by a Government-sponsored consultancy agency in Dresden, the second major city after Leipzig in the province of Saxony.

Housing one of the top technical universities in the country, Dresden in the former communist eastern half still finds the need for foreign specialists since there is a steady outflow of graduates passing out of its engineering and technical institutions to the prosperous northern and western regions of the country. Surprisingly, of the foreign professionals working in the industrial belt around Dresden, more than half were Indians, according to the agency, though all were not necessarily in the IT sector since the region has had long standing contacts with India from the days of the German Democratic Republic.

Indian students I spoke to in Heidelberg University, one of Europe's oldest, complained about the five-year limit in the green card scheme and said this ceiling could prove a dampener and less attractive to Indian specialists who might prefer the U.S and Britain and even Australia and New Zealand. Language was another possible inhibiting factor. With perhaps some tax incentives, they acknowledged that the high standard of living in Germany could outweigh the other factors.

(Concluded)

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