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Immigration Updates for Germany

April 21, 2011— Beginning May 1, 2011, the Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons will be fully in force for nationals of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia (EU8). This means that these countries will no longer have any transitional restrictions regarding access to the German labor market. Please note, nationals from Romania and Bulgaria will continue to require a work permit in order to work in Germany. Clients in Germany will now be able to easily recruit EU8 nationals for work without work or residence restrictions. The elimination of work permits for EU nationals will cause the loss of a large volume of work at the local German labor offices. In order to balance out this change, the labor offices have internally shifted the areas of responsibility.

 Also on this date, work authorization will no longer be processed by the individual local labor offices in Germany directly. This processing will now be centralized at the central labor office, divided between four locations in Germany. The standard work permit application process will still be initiated through the local alien office (determined by the applicant's future place of residence). The alien offices will then forward the work authorization request to one of the four central labor office locations. In the past, the local alien office sent the work authorization request to the local labor office, determined by the location of the company.

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AIReS, which was named to the 2010 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing independently owned businesses in the U.S., is in its 30th year of providing best-in-class relocation management services. With seven ISO registered U.S. offices and other strategically located employees located around the globe, AIReS is a recognized industry leader in delivering high quality relocation and assignment management services to leading corporations. The company boasts some of the industry’s highest annual customer-satisfaction scores and a client-retention rate of over 98%. For more information, please visit the AIReS website at www.aires.com.