External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar and his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock signed the migration and mobility agreement after a meeting in New Delhi on December 5
Germany will make “an extra effort” to attract more skilled workers and students from India following the signing of a bilateral migration and mobility agreement last week, Germany ambassador Philipp Ackermann said on Wednesday.
Ackermann acknowledged that Germany currently takes “too much time”– about four or five months– to process student visa applications and said this was due to both the sheer number of applications and the need to weed out fraudulent applications. He added that authorities are focused on cutting the time needed.
External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar and his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock signed the migration and mobility agreement after a meeting in New Delhi on December 5. The pact will facilitate Indian and German citizens to study, conduct research and work in both countries.
Ackermann noted that there will always be a need for skilled workers in Germany “across the board, be it cooks or nurses or IT experts”. He said, “What we’ll see in the coming years is an outreach towards India in order to get Indians and their families coming to Germany and joining our workforce, and we need them.”
He added, “One of the inflation drivers in Germany is the lack of skilled workers and labour, and therefore we will make an extra effort. Our mobility agreement contains the idea that we will be opening up for legal migration to Indian citizens. We have a good diaspora of Indians in Germany, who have a very good reputation.”
As of December 2021, Germany was home to 160,000 Indian passport holders and 43,000 Indian-origin people, and Ackermann said this number is set to grow. Germany also has more than 34,000 Indian students and there has been “exponential growth” in this area, the envoy said.
“Once they [Indian students] finish their studies in Germany, they have a year to find a job. My experience is that they don’t need a month instead then they can stay and work. We are very interested in having the Indian students in Germany,” he said.
The bureaucratic process for processing student visas takes “too much time right now” and authorities have been overwhelmed by the number of applications. “We get about 1,000 applications a week and you should know that about 85% to 90% of the applications are very good...but 10% are fraud and we need to try to eliminate these frauds as much as possible,” he said.
An Academic Assessment Institution created by Germany to check documents is expected to speed up the student visa procedure. “We’ll try to reduce the time. We are making huge efforts because we are interested in getting Indian students. But right now, you have to be a little patient,” Ackermann said.
Germany also wants the speedy conclusion of the proposed India-European Union (EU) free trade agreement as this will “change our business behaviour in India dramatically”, Ackermann said.
“You have heard that Germany is very much into this diversification discussion, where we feel that we are too dependent on China. We have to look elsewhere and unfortunately, India is not as high on their agenda as it should be. There is no other country that can cope with China, people wise, development wise and so forth,” he said.
Acknowledging that the EU is “not an easy partner” for FTA negotiations, he said the trade deal will open up new opportunities in a market with 450 million people. The two sides should “work hard on getting to bridge the differences”, and “if there is a will from both sides, then we will find compromises”, he added.