Germany is stepping up a strategy to bring in foreign born talent. Canada and Australia have done so for years but have cut back due ostensively to housing shortages. Japan’s government is trying to increase immigration in face of cultural resistance. Germany is going ahead. So says this report issued in September 2025. This is despite misgivings over and attacks from the Right on the large number of Syrian refugees in Germany.

The working age population in Germany declined by one million between 2010 and 2020(go here).

India is now Germany’s most important source country for both labor and education migration. Chancellor Scholz’s October 2024 visit to New Delhi. Germany quadrupled the number of annual visas for skilled Indians to 90,000. Visa processing times have been reduced drastically — Indian applicants now get approvals within two weeks.

Germany fuses higher education, vocational training, and skilled migration into a single demographic-and-labor strategy, with India as the designated partner.  This has made Germany’s relatively predictable, quota-backed pathways attractive to Indian applicants compare to other advanced countries.

 

Indian nationals in Germany rose from 86,000 in 2015 to about 280,000 in 2025. Indian students are now the largest international student group in Germany, increasing 138% between 2018–19 and 2023–24.

 

Acts and administrative policy steps in 2022 and 2023 helped to accelerate in-migration

Indian workers are mainly filling STEM jobs, especially natural sciences, IT, technology, engineering and mathematics. There is demand for AI experts, nursing and elsewhere in healthcare. Deutsche Bahn wants to recruit train drivers.