On a Thursday morning, Claudia sits in a meeting room at TU Dresden and tells me about the life she has built in Germany. In 2010, she came from Mexico together with her German husband. Since then, she has followed the path of picture-perfect integration, so it seems. She started a family, learned German, found a job at the university, and acquired German citizenship. Still, when I ask her about life in Germany she says, “I don’t feel 100% at home.” Claudia’s experience points to a problem highlighted by research from the German Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in 2025. It found that migrants who came to Germany for work or education and were better educated, more economically successful, and more linguistically integrated were particularly likely to consider emigrating.

Germany faces intense international competition for skilled workers. While the country’s economic slowdown has temporarily eased the pressure on the labor market, demographic change continues to make skilled immigration indispensable. A 2024 Bertelsmann Foundation analysis estimates that Germany will need between 288,000 and 368,000 skilled immigrants annually until 2040, depending on shifts in its domestic labor force. Yet, attracting people is only part of the challenge. A 2026 follow-up report to the 2025 IAB paper found that 2.6% of those surveyed had left Germany in the meantime. Extrapolated to the target population, that amounts to around 260,000 people. “The interesting question is: What does this mean for individual stakeholders?” says Dr. Holger Kolb, head of the Annual Report Unit of the German Expert Council on Integration and Migration (SVR). These include employers, the state, skilled migrants themselves, and the wider host society.

The federal government has responded by liberalizing immigration law through the Skilled Immigration Act of 2020 and investing in simplified recognition procedures for foreign qualifications. For Ms. Kriegler, director of a nursing home in Dresden, this was noticeable mainly on a bureaucratic level. She tells me the process now takes three months instead of almost a year—provided all parties cooperate. Companies have adapted as well. Over the past three years, Susan Leupolt, Principal Specialist for Global Mobility at the Dresden site of semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries, has seen her role expand: “At first, it was really just about managing the relocations […], but I quickly realized that that wasn’t enough. It’s not just about making sure their luggage arrives here—they bring their whole lives with them.” The IAB report from 2025 arrived at a similar conclusion. The report underlined that emotional attachment, regular contact with Germans, and a sense of being welcome can all play a role in whether skilled immigrants see a long-term future in Germany. However, for El Boukhari, who is waiting for his nursing qualification to be recognized, everyday life in Dresden is largely limited to four places: “I start from my home, then I go to work, from work I go to the gym, and then sometimes when I want to change things a bit I go for a walk.” Claudia, who came from Mexico, remembers something similar from when she first arrived in Germany: “Your world becomes really small.” Sixteen years later, her world is undoubtedly larger—but the difference between living here and feeling fully at home is still noticeable.

Together, these experiences expose a tension at the heart of Germany’s skilled immigration policy. SVR expert Dr. Holger Kolb summarizes: “The focus is placed on integration in the workplace, in the hope that this will have positive spillover effects on other areas of life.” Susan Leupolt tells me: “When it comes to costs, we do everything we can to ensure that employees arrive here safe and sound.” For those coming from overseas, she estimates costs of up to €40,000. Despite this financial investment, alongside German courses and efforts to raise awareness among local staff about the challenges of relocating, Leupolt sees a limit to what the company can do: “Internationals are well taken care of from Monday to Friday, but after work and on weekends, that really starts to drop off.” Kriegler observes a similar gap in her nursing home: “[Our international staff] is there, but somehow they still seem to be on the sidelines.”