The global battle for the young and able has begun as the Pandemic heads into a third year. Many of the wealthy nations that drive the global economy are sending a message to skilled immigrants all over the world: Help wanted. Now.
In Germany, where officials recently warned that the country needs 400,000 new immigrants a year to fill jobs in fields ranging from academia to air-conditioning, a new Immigration Act offers accelerated work visas and six months to visit and find a job.
Canada will give residency to 1.2 million new immigrants by the year 2023. Israel has a deal to bring health care workers from Nepal. In Australia, where mines, hospitals and pubs are all short-handed after nearly two years with a closed border, the government intends to double the number of immigrants it allows into the country over the next year.
The global drive to attract foreigners with skills, especially those that fall somewhere between physical labor and a physics PhD, aims to smooth out a bumpy recovery from the Pandemic.
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Migrant workers harvest apples in Ontario, Canada. Canada plans to give residency to 1.2 million new immigrants by the year 2023.
Many people have quit or not returned to work because of Covid. Its effects go deeper. By keeping so many people in place, the Pandemic has made it clear that rich nations produce too few new workers, while countries with a surplus of young people often lack work for all.
The debate over immigration could be influenced by new approaches. European governments are divided on how to deal with new waves of asylum seekers. In the United States, immigration policy is mostly stuck in place, with a focus on the Mexican border. Many developed nations are building more generous, efficient and sophisticated programs to bring in foreigners and help them become a permanent part of their societies.
The head of international migration research for the O.E.C.D. said that covid is an example of change. The importance of migration and immigrants has been realized by the countries.
The changes in global mobility have been caused by the Pandemic. It slowed labor migration. More than 30 nations created programs to attract mobile technology workers as it created more competition for "digital nomad" jobs. The rules on work for foreigners who had already moved were loosened.
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People are preparing to cross from Mexico into Texas. In the United States, immigration policy is mostly stuck in place, with a focus on the southern border.
Many countries gave work rights to foreigners who had arrived on student visas. New Zealand extended its temporary work visas indefinitely, while Germany accelerated the recognition process for foreign professional qualifications. The government in Japan allowed temporary workers to change employers and keep their status.
The moves listed in the O.E.C.D report amounted to warnings of labor market desperation. Humanitarian concerns and administrative uncertainty combined to make it difficult to enforce immigration rules during a once-in-a-century epidemic. How would companies and employees survive?
The immigrant population was treated the same as the rest of the population across the O.E.C.D.
A poll in Britain showed that when it came time to reopen, fewer people cared about immigration levels. There were labor shortages. There were not enough workers in the developed world.
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In Britain, the shortage of skilled and semi-skilled workers has affected pig farmers, who may start slaughtering their animals.
The United States, where baby boomers left the job market at a record rate last year, is seeing calls for reorientation of immigration policy towards the economy. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants policymakers to change the immigration system to allow more work visas and green cards.
President Biden is trying to get rid of what is already there. If the social policy bill passes the Senate, it will free up hundreds of thousands of green cards dating back to 1992, making them available for immigrants currently caught up in a bureaucratic backlog.
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Cafes in Australia have asked for a special visa for their baristas.
Many other countries are moving in the same direction. Israel has expanded its bilateral agreements with health workers. There are currently 56,000 immigrants from Asia working in the nursing care sector in Israel. That may not be enough.
She said that the state keeps asking where it wants to take this. Do we want 100,000 foreign workers in the nursing care sector by the year 2035?
In advanced economies, the immigration measures being deployed include lowering barriers to entry for qualified immigrants, digitizing visas to reduce paperwork, increasing salary requirements to reduce exploitation and wage suppression, and promising a route to permanent status for workers most in demand.
Digital nomads in Portugal can stay as long as they want. Canada, which experienced its fifth consecutive year of declining births in 2020, has opened up 20,000 slots for health workers who want to become full residents. New Zealand will grant permanent visas to as many as 165,000 temporary visa holders.
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Medical staff members are treating coronaviruses in Israel. Israel has expanded bilateral agreements with immigrants in the health care sector.
In Japan, a demographic time bomb has left diapers for adults outselling diapers for babies. A Japanese official said last week that the government was looking to let other workers on five-year visas stay indefinitely and bring their families, after offering pathways to residency for aged-care, agriculture and construction workers two years ago.
Parag Khanna is the author of a new book called "Move" and he said it was a war for young talent. As countries get serious about the need to have balanced demographic and meet labor shortages, there is a codification of the tiers of residency.
The risk of a brain drain for the countries where immigrants come from is mitigated by the openness of skilled migration.
Germany is eager to welcome them because of itsvaunted Vocational system, which is short-handed.
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The aging population in Japan is forcing the government to change its policy to allow foreign workers to stay.
The system collapsed during the coronaviruses crisis, according to Holger Bonin, research director for the IZA Institute of Labor Economics. Since German unification, the number of apprenticeship contracts has fallen.
The country's labor force is decreasing as young Germans prefer to attend universities. Germany will lose five million workers in the next 15 years, according to a study by the German Economic Institute.
Immigrants are a stopgap. More than one million people with a refugee background lived in Germany over the past three years. Over time, the country has tried to improve how it integrates both asylum seekers and foreigners with work visas.
A group of 100 people shuffled down the linoleum-floored corridors of a five-story building in a quiet residential area on a recent morning at a regional training hub. They learned to be professional hairdressers, electricians, carpenters, welders, painters, plant mechanics, cutting machine operators and custodial engineers in classrooms and work spaces.
The local government employment office pays for apartment and living expenses for programs lasting 24 to 28 months. The integration course and language course are paid for by the German government.
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The New York Times reports that Serghei Liseniuc, who came to Germany from Moldova in 2015, is training to become a plant mechanic at the Bildungskreis Handwerk in Dortmund.
The deputy director of the center said that trained workers are desperately sought in almost any domain.
Serghei Liseniuc, who came to Germany from Moldova in 2015, has started training as a plant mechanic, which will bring him stable work and higher wages. He said that they are a bit like doctors. Doctors help people and buildings.
Despite the gains for some workers and some locations, economists and demographers argue that labor market gaps will linger and widen as the Pandemic shows how much more needs to be done to manage a global imbalance.
There is a question beneath the new warm welcome: What if there are not enough qualified workers who want to move?
The researcher said that they were hearing the same thing. If you want to attract new workers, you need to offer attractive conditions.
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People are learning how to build walls. To deal with a labor shortage, Germany is trying to improve how it integrates both asylum seekers and foreigners with work visas.
Vjosa Isai and Gabby Sobelman were involved in reporting.
