International qualifications standards of immigrants under scrutiny

In March the German Institute for labour market research (IAB) published an international report on the qualification standards of immigrants. The report compared the qualification standards of immigrants in countries like Germany, USA, Canada, Australia or United Kingdom. According to the results of the report traditional immigration countries such as Canada (59%), New Zealand (46%) and the USA (42%) carry out the highest proportion of high qualified immigrants. Only Ireland as the only European shows similar qualification standards (43%). In Germany for example only a quarter of the foreign population over 25 years possess a high school degree. In traditional immigration countries the percentage is twice as high. The authors of the report, Herbert Brücker and Sebastian Ringer, suggest for European countries to adapt immigration procedures, like a point system, from successful immigration countries. The authors conclude the survey with the outlook that the origin of migrants will be more and more from countries with low human capital in the future. For that reason the qualification standards of immigrants will highly depend on the ability of a country to attract and retain also high qualified workers from these countries.