An article from Reuters | AlertNet
“Blue Card will struggle to lure immigrant talent” by Ingrid Melander
The European Union’s bid to attract skilled immigrants with a fast-track “Blue Card” will struggle as it offers access to only one state at a time, analysts said ahead of Thursday’s meeting of interior ministers to agree the scheme.
The EU wants to make the bloc more competitive in a battle with the United States and other ageing Western states for much coveted technology workers and hospital staff from the developing world, increasingly needed to plug labour gaps.
But after 18 months of working with a Blue Card in one EU state when an immigrant can move to work in another EU state, he or she must apply for a new Blue Card within a month of arrival.
This takes away most of the advantage of having an EU-wide scheme for high skilled migrants because it gives access to a much smaller market and many fewer opportunities, says Jakob von Weizsaecker, from the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank. “The current EU Blue Card proposal would not be competitive compared to the U.S. H1B visa for the highly skilled or the U.S. Green Card,” he said. The H1B visa is another form of temporary work permit available in the United States.
“It is clearly a step in right direction but I don’t expect it to be a big success because if you compare to the United States, a similar title gives access to the whole U.S. market.”
Foreign high-skilled workers make up just 1.72 percent of migrant workers in the EU, compared with 9.9 percent in Australia, 7.3 percent in Canada and 3.2 percent in the United States, EU data shows.
LANGUAGE BARRIER
Bruegel’s Von Weizsaecker said non-English-speaking EU countries also had a language handicap compared to the United States or Australia, and that European universities were also not competitive enough, adding that the EU should therefore work on offering more generous terms to attract the best migrants.
“It is positive that EU member states are starting to think more clearly about the need to attract skill… but it probably won’t be a key mechanism to do that,” said Elizabeth Collett, at the Brussels-based European Policy Centre (EPC) think tank.
Collett said that the way the migrant is welcomed, education opportunities and tax regime play a bigger role.
When agreed by ministers, the Blue Card will be delivered to workers with a work contract which offers them a gross annual salary of at least 1.5 times the average in the member state concerned — that threshold can go down to 1.2 times the average salary in areas with strong labour gaps.
The Blue Card will offer candidates speedier work permits and make it easier for migrants’ families to join them, find public housing and acquire long-term resident status.
EU diplomats said the bloc was close to an agreement on the Blue Card scheme but a few issues still remained to be solved.
One issue was a demand by the Czech Republic that ministers make clear that the scheme would not enter into force before current curbs on workers from new EU member states in the bloc’s other member states were lifted.
Britain, Denmark and Ireland will not take part in the Blue Card Scheme, a French presidency official said.
This article is editing by Louise Ireland and Mark John.