Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: As US President Donald Trump’s H-1B visa crackdown chiefly on Indian IT companies continues, Germany is trying to attract skilled Indian workers, its India envoy said on Wednesday.
Our migration policy is “reliable, it’s modern and it’s predictable,” said Philipp Ackermann, Germany’s Ambassador to India and Bhutan, in a video on his X account.
“We do not change our rules fundamentally overnight,” he said, emphasizing that Indians will find both stability and “great job opportunities” in the European nation, the media reported.
Germany’s outreach comes just days after Trump imposed a whopping USD100,000 fee on new H-1B visa applications for skilled workers, a move that disproportionately affects Indians, who account for over two-thirds of such visas. The policy threatens India’s USD 280 billion technology services industry, putting thousands of jobs at risk.
The German economy needs hundreds of thousands of immigrants a year to counter the negative impact from its aging society. Ackermann opened the message by noting that Indians are among the top earners in Germany.
“The average Indian working in Germany earns more than the average German working in Germany,” he said. “And that’s pretty good news. Because a high salary means that Indians are contributing big-time to our society and our welfare.”
The UK is also weighing plans to attract top global talent, even as the US moves in the opposite direction. London is exploring proposals to drop some visa fees for top global talent, the Financial Times reported this week.
The European Union has raised the number of scholarships offered to Indian students in recent years, it said in a statement earlier this year.
Mobility of skilled workers is critical to India’s services exports, which account for nearly half of the country’s total trade in goods and services, according to official data.
New Delhi is pushing for easier movement of professionals in ongoing trade negotiations with the European Union. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said during a recent visit that he’s hopeful a free trade agreement between the EU and India could be concluded as early as this autumn.
Europe — particularly Germany — has emerged as a key destination for Indian talent, with Indians making up 13 percent of all international students in 2023–24, the German Academic Exchange Service said.
According to a study shared by the German embassy in India, at the beginning of 2025, there were around 280,000 Indian nationals living in Germany as permanent residents.
The US attracts nearly six times as many Indian students, with the total surpassing 200,000 in 2024, according to official data. However, ties between India and Washington have soured after Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on Indian goods, and the visa restrictions will likely reduce the flow of students to the US.