If you want to know how Germany is doing as a country of immigration, you have to look to Frankfurt: 15,000 unanswered inquiries are piling up at the Immigration Office.

Trained employees in particular, including 6,700 academics, are waiting for the fateful decision as to whether and how things will continue for them in this country.

Germany, an economy that will lose 7 million workers due to old age by 2035 and in which 1.8 million jobs are already vacant today, cannot afford such conditions.

At least not if they want to save their prosperity.

A new Skilled Immigration Act should remedy the situation in 2020.

It's gone.

The complaints of those affected are similar throughout the country: It is too complicated to have professional qualifications from abroad recognized.

The procedures cost a lot of money, but the deadlines for processing are often torn.

The authorities are understaffed, the visa procedures abroad take so long that Germany is unattractive for many employees from the outset.

Complicated procedures

The cornerstones of the traffic light government for improved immigration are a ray of hope, but not a paradigm shift.

At least on paper, the government is addressing the right issues: anyone who has a professional qualification abroad and two years of professional experience should be allowed to work in Germany.

"Equivalence" with German qualifications should play a lesser role, the assessment of German employers a greater role.

The procedures are to be completely digitized and more standardized, deadlines are to be met and Germany is to become more attractive abroad thanks to a points system that is being advertised under the keyword “chance card”.

It remains to be seen whether all of this is far-reaching enough to close the skills gap.

There is skepticism in the companies as to whether the complicated procedures in practice can actually be streamlined with the new ideas and whether a certain arbitrariness will disappear from the decisions of the German authorities.

A lot now depends on spelling out the law in such a way that, for example, the vote of the German employer actually plays a decisive role and the announcement does not remain lip service.

Something else is at least as important as the new paragraphs, which are to be launched in the spring: the spirit that blows through the paper - immigration of skilled workers must be encouraged instead of made more difficult - must finally seep into all offices.

Without this mentality, which managers have to exemplify, nothing will come of it.

It would be in the German interest.