Soon it may become even easier for Serbian citizens to emigrate and find employment in Germany because there Germany is experiencing a serious shortage of workers – reports Deutsche Welle.
“Let all who can work come”; this is how the appeal of the Liberal MP group leader in the German parliament can be described. “After the influx of foreign workers in the 1950s and 1970s, the labour market has now closed,” he said and added: “Today, it must be the other way around and anyone who can work must be given a work permit straight away.”
The chaos and crowds at German airports and thousands of cancelled flights have forced the government to intervene and promise the express issuance of work permits for foreign workers because, during the pandemic, airports and airlines laid off a lot of workers and today there is a shortage of at least 7,000 employees. “Germany is looking toward Turkey and the Western Balkans to provide new workers who can work in Germany for a period of up to three months,” writes Deutsche Welle.
Germany’s relatively new immigration law allows anyone who can find an employer in Germany to work in the country, as long as they are skilled in something, be it an accountant or a driver. The most important thing is that they have relevant documents.
The exception is the so-called “Western Balkan rule,” adopted in the midst of the refugee crisis, when migrants from Syria and the Far East were joined by asylum seekers from Serbia, North Macedonia or Kosovo.
At the time, it was specified that 25,000 people from the Western Balkan countries were eligible for work permits in Germany each year, even if they were unskilled workers. However, in the meantime, the German economy’s need for workers has increased.
“There is a lot of available labour in the Western Balkan countries who are willing to work in hotels and restaurants in Germany,” says the head of the restaurant association Dehoga, Guido Zöllick.
Just like airports, restaurants shut down during the pandemic and are now short-staffed. Zöllicksays about 60 percent of hotels and restaurants are looking for waiters and cooks, and he calls on his government to further extend the “Western Balkan rule” that expires in late 2023 and to speed up the issuance of visas and work permits for foreign workers.
(Politika, 03.07.2022)
https://www.politika.rs/sr/clanak/511063/Nemacka-vapi-za-radnicima-sa-Balkana
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