Opinion German Chancellor is visiting India when his country beckons me, while my American visa feels like a dice roll
The trendline in multiple reports is consistent. e Indian enrolments in Germany are rising as US applications fall. What students now hope for is delivery with faster recognition of qualifications, stronger language pathways, affordable housing, and cleaner information channels
Philipp Ackermann, Germany’s Ambassador to India earlier said "we don’t check your social media". On Berlin’s U9 metro, hearing the world before seeing it is quite a usual daily activity — English beside German, Spanish beside Portuguese, Arabic beside Turkish and most mornings, Hindi, Kannada and Bengali too. As a German Chancellor Fellow, I’d spent the year shuttling between Berlin policy corridors and university lanes, then out to smaller towns where “integration” became a checklist of the bus timetable, the first German class, the first rental contract, the first winter. The “Land of Poets and thinkers” is not frictionless, as appointments at Ausländerbehörde (Immigration office) will remind you, but it is largely legible. And in today’s world of student and professional mobility, legibility is confidence of stability.
Place this beside the policy signal from the US, the country John F. Kennedy once called a nation of immigrants. In early January, the US embassy in India warned student visa holders in plain, punitive terms that breaking “US laws” will risk visa revocation, deportation, and future ineligibility. “A visa is a privilege, not a right,” it said. Similar caution followed for H-1B and H-4 applicants, amid reports of rescheduling disruptions and longer waits. This was layered with tighter social-media checks and added procedural burdens. The message is that of uncertainty. Combine that with the price of studying in the US. I write this piece with a private irony — when suspicion becomes policy, and paperwork turns ideological, my American visa feels less like a destination, more like a dice roll.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s trip also has another context – a meeting between the world’s third and fourth largest economies. Berlin is pitching this as his first bilateral visit outside the NATO-EU space, signalling India’s upgraded place in Germany’s priorities. With 25 CEOs travelling with him and trade already above $50 billion in goods and services, the itinerary became self-explanatory — the Ahmedabad visit is for a political handshake and Bengaluru for industry, R&D & technology ties. Under it lies Germany’s quiet wishes to solve their structural shortage of skilled workers, chasing three outcomes on business confidence, supply-chain and tech alignment, and a tighter labour-and-skills partnership.
Indian students and researchers are doing what sensible travellers do when the weather changes — they keep more than one route open. Germany’s stance is making that choice feel more like a door. Merz’s visit adds to the sense that this door may open wider. In June 2025, the German embassy in India reported a 35 per cent rise in applications from India to German universities. Ambassador Philipp Ackermann’s assurance that “we don’t check your social media” carried a larger message reflecting that education is a public good and not a political tool. DAAD’s (German Academic Exchange Service) clarity that most public universities do not work through agents and that students can access free counselling offers something rare in today’s study-abroad market — credibility. Germany is also drawing a line from the classroom to livelihood. Ackermann calls legal Indian migration a success story and points to shortages in caregiving, nursing, and skilled crafts, where Indian health workers could become essential. The trendline in multiple reports is consistent, where Indian enrolments in Germany are rising as US applications fall. What students now hope for is not poetry but delivery with faster recognition of qualifications, stronger language pathways, affordable housing, and cleaner information channels.
The real test will be at the file counter, not on the podium. It will show how quickly qualifications are recognised, whether language support matches the promise, whether affordable housing keeps pace, and whether the process stays out of middlemen’s hands. This is where foreign policy becomes daily life. If Germany stays the course, it will attract a generation of Indian scholars and professionals for reasons no glossy campaign can manufacture. One hopes Indian students and researchers will find that their ambitions in Germany have no speed limit — just like its Autobahns.
The writer is a German Chancellor Fellow (2024–25) with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and writes on the Global South, geopolitics, and the digital-policy landscape
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