Austrian Blue Card

St. Wolfgang, Austria
Photo by Richard Taylor

If I had to do my move to Europe all over again, I'd seriously consider Austria. I've been there several times, it's a lovely country, the people are very friendly, and despite the occasional gay neo-Nazis running around, it's awesome. Now, thanks to the Austrian Blue Card, you can go there, too.

The requirements of the Austrian Blue Card are fairly straightforward. You must have:

1. completed a university course of three years minimum duration
2. a binding employment offer with 150% of the average yearly gross salary for a full-time employee (in 2011: annual gross salary of at least 52 417.50 €, that is about 3 745 € gross per month)
3. and no equally qualified unemployed person registered with the Austrian Public Employment Service was available to be recruited by the potential employer.

There are a few things worth pointing out here. The minimum "three years" degree might sound odd to Americans, but here in Europe, many countries offer a Bachelors degree after only three years of university education, unlike the four years you usually need in the US. The degrees themselves tend to be a bit more focused than the US Bachelors degrees, but they lack some of the breadth that US university students get in their first two years. The argument is that you get this "breadth" in your mandatory schooling, though I've heard anecdotal claims that some EU university graduates (particularly from the UK) aren't as well-rounded as some of their foreign counterparts.

The salary threshold is high, but the idea behind the Blue Card was to bring highly skilled workers to the European Union, so it makes sense and shouldn't be too much of a problem if you're really the worker that the EU seeks.

Point 3, however, is interesting. Though Austria had originally agreed to the EU Blue Card proposal (only the UK, Ireland, and Denmark rejected it), they didn't seem terribly keen on implementing it and eventually the EU issued a "Reasoned Opinion" against Austria (amongst others) for failing to implement the law they said they would implement. Had Austria failed to comply, eventually they would have been dragged to court (yes, countries go to court over here), but they eventually passed the law. However, unlike some other EU countries, they apparently imposed a labor market test requiring that Austrian companies first verify that they couldn't find a qualified unemployed person to take the job. Many people appreciate said protectionism while others decry the extra layer of bureaucracy.

And the benefits if you qualify?

• proof of German language skills before coming to Austria is not required
• the card is good for 24 months 
• free labor market access in case of extension 
• permanent leave to remain can be obtained more quickly and mobility in the EU is facilitated
• quota-free family reunification

In short, a two-year work and residence visa, you don't need to speak German, you can bring your family, and if you get extended, access to the entire EU labor market (minus countries who don't support the Blue Card).

The EU started the Blue Card program to directly compete with the US Green Card. Given how broken US immigration law is, it appears to me that the EU has a solid long-term strategy here. Of course, I think it's being undercut by how they're handling the Euro crisis, but that's a short-term thing. If they can solve that issue (and I mean, really solve that issue), than the future belongs to Europe and China.

Read a bit more about Austria. They're doing well economically, you can get your university education there virtually for free (that's even available to non-EU students) and, like I said, it's a beautiful country.

Official European Blue Card Information

Photo by openDemocracy

Sigh. So I promised that regular postings would continue this week, but I didn't expect our child minder to become gravely ill, nor our car to break down, leading this week to be unexpectedly complex. C'est la vie.

While I'm doing my consulting gig and keeping up this blog, I also research the European Blue Card. Meanwhile, my wife is also working on our company and to better assist clients with recruiting opportunities, she turned to the EU's official Web site and read their information about Blue Cards. It turns out that they have a country-by-country breakdown of Blue Card laws, but it's woefully inadequate. My wife was rather frustrated by this, so she contacted them and this is part of their response:

Thank you for your message. As you correctly point out each Member State has its own legislation and is also responsible for the content on the EU Immigration Portal regarding their legislation. Many Member States have only recently adopted legislation on the Blue Card and started delivering them; therefore they have not provided us with updates yet on their new legislation.

We at the EU Immigration Portal team understand that it can be frustrating for users not to have all the information available. We are currently following up with the Member States to send us their updated information as soon as possible, after which we will upload it to the Portal. This should happen in the next couple of weeks.

Personally, I'm a bit skeptical and very much in the "I'll believe it when I see it" camp, but for now, it's nice to know that this information eventually will have a centralized spot. In the meantime, I'll keep updating you.

International Recruiting

La Grosse Cloche in Bordeaux
Photo by Joancharmant

Regular expat postings should continue next week. Today is the last day on my current contract and my new contract (and the company I'm building with my wife) starts next month. If your company is looking to expand their candidate search to include the world market, drop me a line. International recruiting is only one area of interest for our company, but it's the one you're most likely curious about if you read Overseas Exile.

France: Kiss or Shake Hands?

Skyline of La Défense business district in Paris
Photo by Rosss

Today's guest post is from Géraldine Lepere, the creator of Comme une Française, a web site aimed primarily at expat women who are new in France, but nonetheless is chock full of interesting tips. Today, she writes about whether or not you should kiss or shake hands in the office.

Who's Hiring H1B Visa Workers in the USA?

Still a dream for many people.
Image courtesy Biersaufer

My sincerest apologies for not posting last week. Between wrapping up my current contract, starting a new company, a (very mild) flu, having guests, and time off from work for an OFII meeting, I was a bit swamped last week.

I haven't written anything previously about the US H1B visa program, though I know I have a decent non-US readership. Part of this is because I don't find that visa route as interesting, but the politics of it are fascinating.

We've long known that the majority of skilled labor heads to the US instead of Europe (which is why Europe has introduced the Blue Card) and the major advantages are:

• You only need need to speak English
• One set of immigration laws for all 50 states
• High salaries

If you're young and healthy, an H1B visa is a fantastic choice. So why don't I like it?

1. You can't change jobs on your visa
2. Your spouse cannot work
3. The 7% failure

The first point is crucial. If  you lose your job you can get kicked out of the country very easily. Most countries allow a work visa to be transferred. No so in the US.

The fact that your spouse can't work is frustrating, but this happens in many countries and is one of the reasons why the term trailing spouse was created. It can be a frustrating and financially damaging experience.

The 7% failure is simple: no country can supply more than 7% of H1B visa recipients. So China, with a population of 1.34 billion people, is restricted to the same number as Montenegro, with a population of just over half a million. India and China together make up one third of the world's population and they have a lot of very talented people who will never be allowed to work in the US due to how the H1B is structured.

And then I read this NPR strory.

I've heard for a while that the H1B was being abused, but I didn't know how bad it was. Half of last year's 85,000 H1B visas which were issued were snapped up by off-shore outsourcers. These are companies such as:

• Cognizant
• Infosys
• Wipro
• Tata 

Who are these companies? They are all IT companies and, while I don't know that all of them do this, many of them hire Indian nationals at a lower rate than a comparable US worker (illegal, but immigration enforcement funding is being cut). They often get trained in the US worker's job and then sent home to do it, or remain in the US at a lower rate than the US worker.

This story is finally getting more traction. The Financial Times has the following to say about the H1B visa problem:

H1B holders themselves are subjected to a form of indentured contract that forbids them from changing employers while in the US. Absurdly, their spouses are denied work visas and in many US states cannot even open a bank account or get a drivers’ licence.

There are many other issues with the H1B, but until the US government starts functioning reasonably well (I'm not holding my breath on that), it's going to take a while to fix the rampant problems.

A list of high-demand international jobs

This job is global
Photo by Vaya

If you search for the "STEM" on this Web site, you'll find I've referenced it several times before. It's an acronym which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine. While there are plenty of opportunities for unskilled or younger would-be expats, for people who already have an established career, are considering a university degree, or have a family, teaching English in Thailand, while exciting, might not pay as much (note: South Korea sometimes pays TEFL teachers reasonably well). So what jobs are in demand abroad?


The BBC has an excellent report about in-demand jobs for global migrants. They list the jobs that countries are seeking and which countries are seeking them. And what jobs do they list?

• Accountants
• Audiologists and speech therapists
• Chefs 
• Chemical engineers 
• Civil engineering professionals 
• Dentists 
• Doctors 
• Electrical engineering professionals 
• Electronics engineers 
• Industrial and production engineers 
• IT database and network professionals 
• IT developers and programmers 
• IT engineers and analysts 
• Mechanical engineers 
• Mining and petroleum engineers 
• Nurses           
• Pharmacists 
• Physiotherapists 
• Psychologists 
• Radiographers

You'll immediately notice that most of these are, in fact, STEM professions. These are high-demand professions which, unlike people with degrees in literature, history, art, and so on, immediately add clear monetary value to an economy. That is not to say that the other degrees are bad, but they're not as useful when you want to move abroad.

It's interesting to note that while most of the above require university degrees, the IT professions (and chefs) often don't. If you can teach yourself how to program, manage a database or understand networking, you can not only gain a well-paying job at home, you have a much better chance of getting a job abroad.

I've already written about one strategy to learn how to program for free. Combine that with our five-part how to get a work permit series and you're on your way to a well-paying career in a foreign country.

If you already have IT skills, don't forget that we have jobs in Europe for you. We're also actively working on finding more companies willing to sponsor work permits and relocation. There's been enough interest that we're setting up a company to handle this. We'll have more information in the future.

UK/US family on verge of being split apart?

Justice
Public domain image

Thanks to a lovely combination of US and UK law, this family is about to be split apart. Their son will be forced to live with one parent or another, in either the US or the UK.

If anyone with knowledge of immigration laws or who has the ear of a politician has any ideas about what they can do to help them, please do so! Spouses shouldn't be torn apart, not their children taken away, just because the governments have the cash register open.

The Cyprus Banking Disaster

The Cypriot banking industry
Photo by Jonathan Boeke

By now you may have heard of the infamous Cyprus "haircut", a tiny little euphemism which obscures the fact that there's a serious issue with the European economy and rather than fix the underlying problem — a common currency without a common economic policy — Europe thought it would be a good idea to fix Cyprus' economic woes by partially paying for the national debt by confiscating part of the money that people had kept in Cypriot banks. Northern Cyprus, a state recognized only by Turkey, was once upset that Cyprus joined the EU, but now they may be having the last laugh.

That's a gross oversimplification, but it tells you in a nutshell what is scaring the hell out of a lot of people in Europe, including me. You see, as I'm going freelance in a few weeks, my wife and I have been looking at other countries to see if we could find a better cost of living. In fact, Cyprus was one of the countries we looked at before the government-sanctioned bank robbery occurred.