The Bundestag on Friday (June 23) finally passed a new immigration law reform designed to encourage more people from outside the European Union to come to Germany for work.
"This draft law secures prosperity in Germany," Interior Minister Nancy Faeser of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) said as she presented the government's plan in the chamber in the morning, though she added that it would only work if the bureaucratic hurdles were dismantled during its implementation.
"It's unacceptable that you have to fill in 17 different applications to bring a new care worker into the country," she said.
The biggest opposition party, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) alliance welcomed some of the government's ideas, though they criticized plans to lower the qualification hurdles for foreign workers. According to Andrea Lindholz of the CSU, plans to lower the level of German language skills necessary would only encourage low-skilled workers.
Lindholz argued that the new law would do nothing to address what she called the main problem: Bureaucratic bottlenecks such as over-long procedures at foreign consulates.
She also said that the plans to open opportunities for asylum seekers who were already in the county ran the risk of "turning the asylum process into a kind of state-financed job-seeking opportunity in Germany."
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