Ask HN: Is this possible? Sounds too good to be true

[hajrice]

Read a Linkedin[1] post from someone in the cabinet in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina proposing a plan where local companies could basically bypass work permits and fast-track employees to citizenship. There's other items there, but this caught my attention

Is this actually possible?

[*1] Post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7246114526868213760/

[sparkie]

It's possible if the proposal is accepted into legislation. Any sovereign nation can decide its own immigration rules. Other countries have similar programmes to attract top talent.

Most likely this kind of work permit will be limited to skilled trades. There will be some requirements, such as having a degree (or equivalent qualification) in the relevant field and/or relevant work experience. It's not going to be for low-skilled jobs where anyone could qualify, unless there's a worker shortage that needs to be filled.

[hajrice]

From what I could gather, they're also shifting the responsibility of due diligence from a government to a company ?

[sparkie]

The keyword there is responsibility. It's a reasonable approach - taking some workload off government immigration bodies to speed up the process, and it saves the taxpayer money because the costs of background checks would fall on the company doing the recruiting.

Companies recruiting foreign talent would likely need to register on this programme and will have to do their due diligence when recruiting - perhaps subject to fines or prosecutions if they fail to do proper checks. I can't say for sure as I can't read the proposal.