Germany's Dilemma
     Perhaps nowhere are the stakes higher than in Germany, where the unemployment rate lingers around 10 percent. German tech companies have complained that their skills shortage is severe that an estimated 75,000 jobs go unfilled because these companies can't find qualified workers. In March, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder proposed creating a worker visa program that would allow special permits for up to 20,000 foreign IT specialists to be allowed into Germany for a three-to-five-year period. In tandem with his proposal, German companies agreed to intensify high-tech training for workers. The Federal Employment Agency also plans to increase the number of people it trains for information technology jobs alongside a government drive to boost tech education.
     Gerhard's invite for foreign workers, the equivalent of raising the cap on H-1B visas in the United States, has sparked a firestorm of controversy. Labor groups have opposed the plan, saying Germany has plenty of unemployed workers and should be looking from within to hire. The opposition even has a catch phrase "Kinder statt Inder," (Children instead of Indians, roughly) a clear call for the government to educate before it imports more foreign high-tech workers. Still, some in industry have said that Schroeder's proposal to open the doors to 20,000 foreign workers, which was scaled back from his original 30,000 after intense political pressure, isn't enough.
     Indeed, Hinrich Thoelken, a spokesman with the German Embassy in the United States, said Shoroder's solution is more quick fix than a long-term panacea.
     "The long-term solution is to offer more incentives for proper training," he said, adding that Germany has 4 million unemployed people.
     Thoelken said once the program gets going, it's possible the government could raise the cap even higher for these foreign high-tech workers. But the government has no plans for that now, he said.
     While industry's appetite for more high-tech workers might strike familiar chords in the United States, the issue in Germany is more complicated says Leo Welt, executive director of the German-American Business Council. Welt explained that even within the country, some German high-tech workers are unwilling to move from one side of Germany to the other, just to take a job. Although the Americans usually don't give much thought to packing up and leaving town for a better job, Welt says this isn't the case in Germany. "They refuse to move. The easterners don't want to move to the west and vice versa. German workers have difficulty leaving their community and environment," says Welt, who is from Berlin.
     But Germany's worker woes aren't unique, Thoelken notes. He says there's a general shortage of high-tech workers throughout Europe, and it's only a matter of time before countries engage in fierce competition for techno workers.

The International Race For Workers
     Other nations already are beginning to reach into the global grab bag for tech workers, opening the floodgates through worker visa programs that aim to put them ahead in the race for the world's IT talent.
     In Canada, where the software industry estimates that between 20,000 and 50,000 tech jobs go unmet, the government has had a liberal visa pilot program for high-tech workers since 1998. The government is considering a plan to extend the program to other sectors and is also mulling a plan to allow spouses work visas.
     Similarly, Australia, the United Kingdom and Japan have or are preparing to up the ante on these temporary visas. The drumbeat from the technology industry sounds similar to the one in the United States and companies worldwide complain that high-tech jobs are opening before they can be filled. A recent survey by the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA), a global group of tech coalitions, found that 10 percent of its members said the unavailability of skilled workers was a major barrier to e-commerce.
     But Gerard de Graaf, first secretary of trade for the EU's Washington delegation, said while nations can import more high-tech workers, the issues Europe, and Germany face are especially complex.
     "Europe does not see itself as a continent that will open its borders," he said. "We like to think we're not an immigration area, but in reality, we are. This will be a politically difficult issue to address in the European Union."
     Part of the e-Europe initiative, a catchall plan designed to speed Europe into the information age, tackles Europe's high-tech worker woes with education. But de Graaf said education is a long-term relief. To meet the demands of a high-tech company looking to hire a programmer tomorrow, Europe will have to allow more foreign workers in. While de Graaf said the situation in Europe is by no means at crisis level, he said Europe is also at risk of losing workers to the U.S. high-tech sector.
     "If Europe wants to have a dynamic economy, we need to think about letting more non-Europeans in," he said.
- by Caroline Broder