Indian Skilled Workers in Hamburg

The Skilled Workers Immigration Act came into force on March 1, 2020 and is intended to make it easier for qualified workers from non-EU countries to come to Germany – this applies in particular to visa procedures. The German government wants to push the recruitment of skilled workers in India.

To support this cause, the Senate Chancellery Hamburg and the Hamburg Representation Mumbai set up a regular exchange format on skilled labour recruitment from India for the location Hamburg. The aim is to present the initiatives of the participating institutions, to identify synergies and potential for cooperation, and to identify hotspots.

The meeting held on 12th April 2022 was focused on the health care sector. Hamburg’s health care sector is already feeling the impact of a significant shortage of skilled workers today. In contrast, the state of Kerala in India contains a large qualified workforce in this field. To explore the potential of collaboration, synergies but also identify obstacles, our Working Group “Indische Fachkräfte für Hamburg” has interacted in a hybrid format to enable a direct exchange with relevant institutions from India.

A few of the points discussed during the exchange were possible options for the ease of on-boarding, challenges faced to the language and culture, ease of visa procedures and integration of the migrants into the German system.

Earlier this year, the Kerala government signed an MoU with the German Federal Employment Agency for the hiring of nurses from Kerala. With the discussion still in process, this year in August, the first nursing staff can be expected through the Triple Win project. Of the approximately 13,000 applicants, the first 500 could come to Germany. With a majority being women nurses, the recruitment process usually takes 10-12 months, 3 months from reaching language level B1 to entry. Hamburg is looking forward to continuing its history as welcoming “home port” for people from all around the world.