Germany's New Recruits

Only a year and a half ago, Rohith Ajjampur was teaching at a computer training school near Bangalore in India's high-tech heartland. Almost by accident, he saw a newspaper photo of a German computer executive wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan, "Are you Indian?" Intrigued, he visited the company's website and saw that it was looking for programmers. Today Ajjampur, 25, is working at the Berlin Internet firm Datango — the company that advertised on the T-shirt. "I never expected this to happen," he says, gesturing to the surrounding high-rises of the East Berlin skyline.

Ajjampur represents a new kind of immigrant to Germany, the beneficiary of a year-old government program designed to issue fast-track work permits to foreigners with expertise in computer technology. The government has approved an initial block of 10,000 visas — known as "green cards," after the American program that gives temporary residence to foreigners — and is virtually certain to extend the program to another 10,000 before the end of this year. The visas are valid for two years, renewable for a total of five years' employment. With the industry trade group bitkom estimating that 75,000 technology jobs in the country go unfilled, the green cards are designed to give companies access to pools of labor overseas to make up for the domestic shortfall.

So far the program has issued about 7,100 visas, and 61% have gone to companies with fewer than 100 employees, like Datango. "Last year we had great difficulties finding employees who were qualified," says Alexander Artopé, head of Datango's management board. "The qualifications we were looking for were hardly available on the German job market." Says Stephan Pfisterer, who heads the labor and education department of bitkom: "We think the green card process is quite successful when you consider that from all German universities combined there will be only 5,500 graduates in information technology this year." Pfisterer explains that one reason so many green cards go to small companies is that large firms such as Siemens and IBM with big overseas operations have long been able to recruit abroad.

Even though it's half a world away, India remains the largest contributor of computer experts with 1,430 visas, followed by East European countries such as Russia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. At Datango, three of the 50 employees are from India, two are Americans and one is from Switzerland.

Like most of the other Indians who received green cards, Ajjampur is fluent in English but doesn't speak any German. Datango provided a mentor, an Indian who had graduated from a German university, to help Ajjampur and his other Indian colleagues settle in. They went shopping together and learned such mundane tasks as how to navigate the streetcars that still ply East Berlin. Initially the three Indian programmers shared a furnished apartment. "When I arrived Datango had already arranged a nice, fully furnished place for us," Ajjampur said. "If they hadn't helped us, we would have been in a real mess." Eventually, Ajjampur, who is unmarried, tired of communal living. With the help of a local Indian family, he found a one-room, $265-a-month studio apartment and set up housekeeping on his own.

Ajjampur acknowledges that while he had dreamed of working abroad, he had always thought he would move to the U.S., where communities of Indians already exist in high-tech areas. "I heard a lot about Germany, the racism and all that stuff," Ajjampur says of the country's reputation for racially motivated attacks on foreigners. "To my surprise, the people are really warm and friendly."

Of course, the big attraction of the job at Datango, where he writes software that offers electronic "guided tours" to help surfers navigate websites, was the chance to earn more money. In India he made only about $35 a month for his part-time job. Now he's earning $3,300 monthly, though nearly half goes to taxes. "I'm self-reliant now and can afford to support my parents," he says proudly.

Because of language constraints, Ajjampur tends to socialize with other Indians or colleagues at work, most of whom speak English, the universal language of the Internet. Still, he likes what he has seen of Germany. "I have a feeling that living in Europe is better than conditions in the U.S.," he says. "I like the way of life here." He says he is especially attracted to the combination of hip nightlife, varied restaraunts and ease of mass transit.

Despite positive stories like Ajjampur's, the green card program has been controversial in Germany, where immigration remains a touchy subject. The country has more than 7 million foreigners, about 9% of the population, the highest percentage in Western Europe. In state elections last year, the opposition Christian Democratic Union used as a campaign slogan "Kinder statt Inder," which means "children instead of Indians." The slogan was meant to suggest that the state should properly educate German children to fill the country's high-tech jobs rather than bring in foreigners. But many people considered the phrase anti-immigrant racism.

The real "Kinder" issue is Germany's declining birth rate, which suggests the population will fall by 10 million in the next 50 years. Many experts believe that immigration is the only way to assure that job vacancies are filled and the tax base becomes big enough to support the growing ranks of retired people. As a result, an expert panel on immigration is scheduled to unveil a sweeping plan next month. According to press leaks, the panel will recommend giving out 20,000 permanent work permits and a further 20,000 temporary visas a year based on a quota system that will include education, family size and language skills in evaluating potential applicants.

Germany's high-tech industry has made much of the fact that for every visa issued to a foreign computer specialist, at least two jobs are created for German workers in support positions such as customer service. And over the past year, opposition to the green card scheme seems to have become muted, with Angela Merkel, the CDU leader, announcing a nuanced change to her party's outright opposition to immigration to allow a small number of temporary visas to help industry fill its job vacancies. But this is indeed a minor shift: when the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder appealed last month for a bipartisan consensus on immigration so that it won't become an issue in next year's parliamentary election, the CDU rejected the plea.

But the CDU's stand won't provide much relief to the pressing manpower demands of German business. The Federal Association of German Industry says that in addition to the large number of vacant computer jobs, the country lacks 80,000 people in the food service sector, 50,000 nurses and 40,000 skilled workers in the metal and electrical industry. With its cool attitude toward foreigners and a reputation for high taxes, Germany has a hard time attracting workers even with good pay, says Christoph Kannengiesser, manager of the German Federation of Employers. "The workforce needs to be convinced that Germany is an attractive workplace," he says. With employees like Ajjampur sending home glowing reports about the country's pleasant lifestyle and unexpected hospitality, that task may become much easier.