BERLIN (dpa) – A year ago, Harianto Wijaya made headlines across Germany. Amid great fanfare, the 25-year-old Indonesian computer expert was granted the first-ever so-called Green Card.
Employment Minister Walter Riester, who had been a hesitant advocate of the innovation, announced Germany was finally ready to compete on the world market by attracting such specialists.
One year later, the balance sheet looks rather sobering. Since its introduction about 8,600 specialists have, like Wijaya, received a Green Card, which bestows work and residency permission for a five- year period.
In early 2000 the computer branch had, however, announced a much higher short-term need of between 75,000 and 100,000 specialists it said it could not find in Germany.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder reacted, making the surprise announcement at the Cebit computer fair in February 2000 that an exception would be made to existing immigration laws to facilitate the entry of computer specialist.
Schroeder set his employment minister to work on the project and the Green Card idea, along with a thorny national debate about the country’s immigration laws in general, emerged.
The Green Card was supposed to follow the American example and provide a relatively non- bureaucratic and speedy entry to those who were useful to the country’s economy.
But with four million unemployed and the country’s unions solidly opposed to Riester’s plan and others criticising it as too restrictive, a cry of protest rang out as the employment minister submitted his first draft for a bill changing the regulations.
Some said the requirements for computer-and communications specialists were so strict that even Microsoft founder Bill Gates would have been denied entry.
Only those who could show they had paSsed university final exams were to be admitted and that for only three years, with the possibility of extending their stay for an additional two years.
But political pressure forced a relaxation of these restrictions, lengthening the permit to a five-year period and allowing family members to accompany the foreign workers to Germany.
Another provision allowed the recognition of a company’s offer of an annual income of 100,000 marks (45,600 dollars) annually as an alternative application criterium. The number of Green Cards available was set at 20,000 per year.
The innovation appeared to be popular, with 20,000 people from all over the world inquiring about it immediately via Internet. But the expected rush never materialised. Officials even indicated recently their willingness to eliminate the five-year residency limit.
Wijaya, who has lived in Germany since 1993, thinks he knows why officials are considering loosening the restriction. He says would-be foreign workers are “afraid they will not be accepted in Germany and afraid that the door to Germany is only half open,” he told the German magazine Stern.
It is for this reason, he says, that Germany will have difficulty attracting the 50,000 well-educated and qualified professionals a specially-appointed commission recently said are needed.
Wijaya also says work conditions are better in other countries than in Germany, that they offer more money and lower taxes. An American company had tempted Wijaya in this way, offering him 112,500 dollars, he said.
“That’s hard – even for German companies, ” Wijaya said.
