his audience: Germany desperately needs people with technology skills, he said–so why not welcome Indian or Russian computer wizards into the country? Even his original plan–for 30,000 temporary high-tech-worker visas–fell far short of what is needed. Germany lacks 300,000 skilled workers, half of them in the information-technology (IT) industry itself. And the shortfall is getting worse. Still, under pressure from unions and fundamentalist conservatives, the chancellor soon scaled back his proposal.
“Kinder statt Inder”–i.e., Let’s have babies rather than Bengalis–is the campaign slogan of Jurgen Ruttgers, the CDU candidate in next month’s North Rhine-Westphalia election. And with German unemployment at 10 percent, retraining the domestic work force is a vital medium-term goal. But in an industry where a few months can make or break a company, waiting two years or more for the first retrained workers to appear is not a solution.
The suggested compromise–trying to attract 20,000 foreign IT workers to Germany–won’t do much for the high-tech companies Schroder is so keen to help. And it certainly doesn’t bode well for the European Union’s recently proclaimed goal of becoming “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world.” To have a prayer of moving past the United States in the IT area (which this goal implies), Europe cannot afford to be so lukewarm to the immigration of highly skilled, non-EU foreigners.
The United States, of course, owes a good portion of its technological prowess to newcomers. Indian and Chinese immigrants accounted for a third of the technology start-ups in Silicon Valley between 1995 and 1998. For the United States, which currently issues 115,000 H1-B visas a year, the question is one of raising the number, not starting a program, as it is in Germany. Yet there, too, the issue is politically charged–and puts Gore in a position much like Schroder’s. Both men have repeatedly reached out to the New Economy players, hoping to win political support at the expense of the traditionally pro-business conservative parties. They’ve tried to balance this with appeals to their traditional supporters in labor. But the computer and software industries in both countries desperately want more temporary workers–while organized labor is determined to keep such workers out.
The tensions between “old” and “new” Democrat and “old” and “new” Social Democrat remain. Especially for Gore, who’s trying to get elected next fall.(Schroder is not up for re-election until 2002.) So far, the vice president has mostly avoided the immigration issue. His speeches are full of references to educating workers so that they can compete in a high-tech economy, but he’s had little to say about H1-B visas. This may be partly because his opponent, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, has not yet focused a major policy speech on the immigration issue, though he has come out in favor of raising the H1-B total to 200,000. Regardless, there’s no real incentive for Gore to hurry up and take a stand. Though most unions have endorsed him, there are still some holdouts, most prominently the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers. The vice president has already strained his relationship with unions by supporting China’s membership in the World Trade Organization. Soon enough, Republicans may try to strain the relationship further, using H1-B visas as a classic “wedge” issue.
The players’ positions will no doubt evolve. Until recently, German trade unions–and the German left–strongly favored the integration of foreigners in Germany into the labor force. That’s a sharp contrast with the U.S. labor movement, which has long opposed immigration. It was one of the main forces behind the Immigration Act of 1921, which shut down immigration after World War I.
But for now, Chancellor Schroder and Vice President Gore are twisting in the same political winds. It’s not easy reconciling the demands of Old Economy and New Economy supporters. In the end, though, both may find that, to keep an edge in a globalized economy, there is no alternative to opening up to the world.
