Entry & Residence
EU Blue Card Holders Tend to Stay in Germany
Germany is successful in retaining foreign specialists who come to the country under the European Union “Blue Card” immigration program.
Jul 26, 2023
That’s the result of data from the Federal Statistical Office. It shows that 83 percent of the roughly 68,900 people who obtained blue cards between 2012 and 2017 still lived in Germany five years later.
The EU Blue Card was created in 2012 to allow highly qualified, highly educated foreign nationals to enter the EU to work.
The largest contingent of EU Blue Card recipients in Germany in the first five years of the program (22.4 percent) were from India. Nearly 60 percent of EU Blue Card holders had been granted permanent residence permits within five years, with 11.3 percent having become German citizens and nine percent retaining their cards.
The survey also found that 46 percent of all foreign nationals who came to Germany to study between 2006 and 2012 still resided in the country after ten years.
