Germany has flipped the switch on a nationwide e-visa portal that allows companies to file, track and finalise skilled-worker residence permits entirely online. The Federal Foreign Office confirmed that the system, required by last year’s Skilled Workers Immigration Act, went live at all 167 German missions abroad and in every local foreigners’ authority on 20 February.
Until now, HR departments had to shuttle paper bundles between embassies, the Federal Employment Agency (BA) and multiple recognition bodies – a process that routinely stretched EU Blue Card lead-times beyond two months. The new platform links those authorities electronically, performs automatic plausibility checks and flags missing documents before a case can stall. Pilot data published by the Interior Ministry show average processing times for Blue Cards and intra-company-transfer (ICT) permits have already fallen from 66 to 27 days, giving multinationals far more certainty when scheduling project start-dates.
For applicants the experience also changes dramatically. Biometric data are captured once, fees can be paid by credit card, and renewals – as well as family-reunification applications – can be completed from abroad. A multilingual chatbot walks users through Germany’s still-complex documentation rules, while optical-character-recognition software now accepts high-resolution scans in lieu of legalised copies of diplomas.
![Germany rolls out fully-digital skilled-worker visa portal across all embassies]()
Companies that prefer to hand off some of the administrative workload can turn to VisaHQ, whose platform syncs with the new federal interfaces, pre-screens documents and provides live status alerts to both HR and travelling employees. The service, which can be explored at https://www.visahq.com/germany/ also supports dependent and renewal filings, offering a convenient one-stop shop alongside the government portal.
Large employers are racing to integrate the government’s application-programming-interfaces into their relocation dashboards. Siemens, SAP and several Mittelstand exporters told the BDA employers’ federation that the change will save “thousands of staff hours” each year and reduce the need for costly assignment delays. Relocation providers such as Jobbatical and Localyze have already wrapped visa-tracking, housing search and onboarding check-lists around the live data feed.
The portal still leaves a manual security screening of up to two weeks, but lawyers say the reform nevertheless puts Germany “in the top tier of visa efficiency” in Europe. Companies are being advised to update internal mobility policies: original paper diplomas are no longer required at embassy stage, electronic signatures are valid and salary guarantees must be entered in euro. Failure to adapt internal processes, consultants warn, could negate much of the time saved by the state’s digitisation push.
Until now, HR departments had to shuttle paper bundles between embassies, the Federal Employment Agency (BA) and multiple recognition bodies – a process that routinely stretched EU Blue Card lead-times beyond two months. The new platform links those authorities electronically, performs automatic plausibility checks and flags missing documents before a case can stall. Pilot data published by the Interior Ministry show average processing times for Blue Cards and intra-company-transfer (ICT) permits have already fallen from 66 to 27 days, giving multinationals far more certainty when scheduling project start-dates.
For applicants the experience also changes dramatically. Biometric data are captured once, fees can be paid by credit card, and renewals – as well as family-reunification applications – can be completed from abroad. A multilingual chatbot walks users through Germany’s still-complex documentation rules, while optical-character-recognition software now accepts high-resolution scans in lieu of legalised copies of diplomas.
Companies that prefer to hand off some of the administrative workload can turn to VisaHQ, whose platform syncs with the new federal interfaces, pre-screens documents and provides live status alerts to both HR and travelling employees. The service, which can be explored at https://www.visahq.com/germany/ also supports dependent and renewal filings, offering a convenient one-stop shop alongside the government portal.
Large employers are racing to integrate the government’s application-programming-interfaces into their relocation dashboards. Siemens, SAP and several Mittelstand exporters told the BDA employers’ federation that the change will save “thousands of staff hours” each year and reduce the need for costly assignment delays. Relocation providers such as Jobbatical and Localyze have already wrapped visa-tracking, housing search and onboarding check-lists around the live data feed.
The portal still leaves a manual security screening of up to two weeks, but lawyers say the reform nevertheless puts Germany “in the top tier of visa efficiency” in Europe. Companies are being advised to update internal mobility policies: original paper diplomas are no longer required at embassy stage, electronic signatures are valid and salary guarantees must be entered in euro. Failure to adapt internal processes, consultants warn, could negate much of the time saved by the state’s digitisation push.
