Germany Green Card

Newspapers

English-language newspapers such as International Herald Tribune, Wall Street, The European are available at newspaper stands in larger cities or can be subscribed to. German, Italian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish as well as Arabic and Asian newspapers are also available in most large press  centers.

Sports

There are countless activities in Germany you can pursue in your free time: for example hiking and skiing in the mountainous regions of the south or sailing in the north. And there are plenty of lakes all over Germany for swimming and surfing. Last but not least tennis is a very popular sport in the entire country. Fitness clubs and spas are very much in fashion and found in every town. Hashing organizations: you may find a hash club wherever you are in the world. This is mainly a club that organizes running events and has social activities afterwards. A great way to meet people!

Integration Living in Germany without speaking the language you can find your way around in a stumbling kind of way but you are missing the essential beauty of the experience. There are many German language schools available. The trick is finding which is the best for you. Besides the Goethe Institute and Berlitz International schools which come with a reputation there are also good lesser-known schools. If you can speak some German you can make friends with Germans in your own neighborhood. There are many social groups and volunteer organizations that offer a variety of opportunities for expatriates to meet with their fellow countrymen.

Contact your Embassy to see if they can provide you with a listing of organizations.

German IT-market conditions

In Germany, the market for information technology and telecommunications is in excellent condition. This high-tech field is growing twice as fast as Germany's total economy. At the same time, the number of jobs being generated in these areas has increased at a similarly dramatic pace. Between 30,000 and 40,000 new jobs are being created each year.

Speaking of the shortage of qualified IT specialists in Germany at the CeBIT electronics show in February 2000, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said: "It is necessary to bring foreign IT specialists to Germany". Meanwhile, the government sketched plans for the creation of a new category of work permits for engineers, programmers and other information technology specialists. The new Green Card initiative came into force in August 2000 and was to be coupled with an increase in the government's support for programs to train Germans in information-related fields.

The German Government has prepared the ground for foreign IT specialists to come to Germany: In a first step, which started 1 August 2000, 10,000 IT professionals will get a work permit. After 10,000 work permits have been issued a monitoring procedure is to be carried out to determine if there is further need for computer specialists. If there is a further need, the program will be extended to another 10 000 persons. Working and salary conditions for these foreign specialists must be the same as for domestic employees.

A year later, fewer than 9000 IT-experts have come to Germany, and it is uncertain how many of those are still in the country. The program has brought little relief to IT businesses still desperate for skilled personnel. But it would be wrong to condemn the Green Card initiative just because of that. Without the Green Card initiative, the German government may never have established its Independent Commission on Immigration (under the chairmanship of Rita Suessmuth, a former president of Germany's parliament and a member of the opposition Christian Democratic Union), which presented its report on asylum and immigration policy in July 2001. It ended a ban on recruitment abroad that had been in place since 1973 and was thus a paradigm change in labor market and immigration policies, as the Suessmuth commission noted.

Opening the borders to more foreign workers might help to diminish the view of Germany as a country hostile to foreigners. "More and more people recognize that we are in a changing situation, that we need people from outside. But it 's still a difficult learning process," said Rita Suessmuth. German Federal Labor Ministry is still expected to approve the second wave of Green Cards, another 10,000, after the summer 2001 break. Officials plan to carefully study "the real state of the computer industry," but according to German government figures, the number of vacant information technology positions has actually risen by 44 percent to 17,300 within a year.

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