Hospital manager Kathrin Leffler says she worries Germany's tense pre-election debate on immigration will make it harder to recruit enough skilled workers from abroad to fill a growing labour shortage.

National polls on Sunday are expected to deliver victory for the conservative CDU/CSU bloc and a strong second-place showing for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Both parties have promised a crackdown on immigration, with the AfD campaigning in parts of the country with fake plane tickets to send illegal migrants on a one-way journey home.

Potential new employees are "looking very carefully at which country they will go to in the future, where they want to live", said Leffler, director of care at a clinic in Berlin.

The recent political developments were "certainly not positive", when it comes to attracting the best and brightest from abroad, she said.

In German hospitals, some 15 percent of all medical professionals have a foreign passport, including about 5,000 Syrian doctors.

And the share of foreign workers is expected to grow as older generations head into retirement, without enough local........

© International Business Times