Using the Blue Card

Today, the population of immigrants in Europe, particularly n Switzerland, has largely increased. This is the biggest reason why anti-immigration groups started to become very active and rampant, especially when they were led by James Schwarzenbach in the 1970’s era.

Attracting immigrants

The entire Europe is presently highly interested in attracting and inviting highly skilled immigrants for filling in the continents looming demographic crisis and shortage in the necessary and related skills. However, expert economists strongly warn European countries that they have to set some strict conditions first.

The main reason for their need of highly skilled workers is the widening demographic gap. It is because of this gap that majority of today’s students shy away from courses that involve technical and scientific studies. This makes it even more difficult to match the increasing demand for high skilled labor within Europe.

Today, the supply of specialists in certain technological courses is continuously receding. It is quite unfortunate that the European Union is presently unsuccessful in its efforts of attracting huge numbers of expert engineers and technicians from slowly emerging economies like India and China to work in their country instead. Examples of nations that have obtained success in this kind of endeavor are New Zealand, United States of America, Australia, and Canada.

Skilled labor

The results coming from the statistical research conducted by the Commissioner of Justice and Home Affairs, Frattini, indicate that eighty-five percent of the unskilled laborers decide to go to the EU and only five percent to the US. Sadly, however, merely five percent of the skilled labor workers only arrive in EU, since US, alone, absorbs a very huge share of highly skilled technicians, ICT specialists, and engineers, which accounts to around fifty-five percent of the total population of today’s most skilled mobile workforce.

Solution to the problem

It is because of this lag in the race regarding the best and most innovative brains that Europe is made unable to assert its position as a world leader when it comes to innovation. The first group or organization that tackled this particular issue is the Portuguese Presidency, with help from a high level conference on Legal Immigration.

It was on the thirteenth and fourteenth of September of 2007 that the Commission proposed its concept of the Blue Card in Lisbon. This Blue Card is actually part of their general strategy with regards to legal migration.

What is the Blue Card?

This Blue Card is actually the main policy initiative of the whole Europe in today’s global competition for the world’s best and very mobile brains. The main target, in this case, is to generate a single application process for workers who are not citizens of Europe yet live and work inside different European countries. This Blue Card proposal aims to attract more than twenty million very skilled employees and workers from the nations that are outside Europe.

Basically, the Blue Card is for use in Europe, while the Green Card is how individuals can obtain citizenship in the United States of America.