Neither the German federal government nor any other state agency has an overview of whether temporary labour migrants from developing countries leave Germany after their authorized stay. This lack of data was revealed by investigations carried out by the newspaper “Welt am Sonntag”.
In 2024 a new legal provision was introduced that allows up to 25,000 foreigners-who have no formal qualifications or language skills-to engage in “short‑term, quota‑limited employment” in Germany each year. Anyone who is not a citizen of a visa‑free country and wishes to take advantage of this provision must first obtain approval from the Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit, BA). The BA checks, for example, whether a specific German company actually intends to employ the applicant. In addition, the applicant must obtain a visa from the Federal Foreign Office, which then permits a work period of up to eight months.
The BA told “Welt am Sonntag” that it granted 14,963 approvals for short‑term quota‑limited employment under paragraph 15d of the Employment Ordinance last year. However, it does not keep records of how many of those approvals actually led to a job start, nor does it track whether migrants who arrived under the new rule have returned to their home countries since its introduction in March 2024.
According to the Foreign Office, not all applicants who receive BA approval are issued a visa. The ministry reported that around 7,650 “national visas” were granted in this context in 2025, indicating that the rule is still only partly exploited. As the office explained, the main countries of origin for applicants since the rule’s introduction have been Vietnam, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Kosovo, Uzbekistan, and Turkey. Neither the BA nor the Foreign Office records whether those people return home after the agreed period or remain in Germany; such data are simply “not captured”.
Both the BA and the Foreign Office refer analysts to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) and to the higher Ministry of the Interior, saying these agencies might contain more information. Yet those bodies also do not keep systematic records of the migrants’ entries and exits. BAMF acknowledges that only a small fraction of these individuals appear in the central foreigner register.
There is no official data on how the short‑term intake of unqualified workers may evolve into permanent immigration-whether through subsequent residence permits for vocational training or through asylum applications. Nevertheless, BAMF does have some relevant findings: it estimates that roughly one in six asylum seekers initially entered Germany on a visa before filing for protection. In response to a request from “Welt am Sonntag” the agency disclosed that of the 87,787 asylum applicants in the first nine months of the previous year, 13,700 had entered on a visa.
