July 15, 2024 - 1:00pm
Should asylum seekers be forced or allowed to work? As reported this weekend, that’s the question Germany is asking itself as it tries to balance work shortages in the economy with the rising number of refugees entering the country. While it’s a debate that Germany needs to have, this should be done without blurring the lines between genuine refugees, illegal migrants and skilled foreign workers.
With over three million refugees living in Germany, the country is one of the biggest hosts of asylum seekers in the world. Last year alone over 350,000 people applied, an increase of over 50% from 2022 — and that’s without the one million Ukrainian refugees who don’t have to apply for asylum.
The big question remains whether Germany can afford the rising costs which accompany this approach. Asylum-related expenditure for the federal government is expected to be around €21.3 billion, or 5% of the total this year. Add the cost of immigration, and the figure rises to €48.2 billion — nearly equivalent to regular expenditure for defence last year.
But the real pressure is on local districts which are allocated fixed numbers of people to accommodate. Berlin alone spent €1 billion last year on refugees, some of whom are being compelled by local councils to do low-paid work.
In the Saale-Orla borough in the eastern state of Thuringia, dozens of refugees do four hours of community work a day for 80 cents an hour or €64 a month on top of their allowance. Most help run the accommodation in which they are housed. A smaller number are being deployed externally.
One Syrian refugee, 49-year-old Hanan Baghdadi, washes football shirts at the Blau-Weiß football club in Neustadt, telling one German newspaper that she is “satisfied with my first job in Germany”. Other refugees work in a local food bank, packing groceries into bags.
District councillor Christian Hergott sees it as a way of giving refugees an opportunity to establish a daily routine and learn German. If they are allowed to stay, they will have taken their first steps towards finding employment. If asylum is denied, the scheme will allow them to “give something back to society and the German taxpayer”, as Herrgott explained in an interview.
But there is force behind the project. André Schröder, district councillor in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, asked 64 asylum seekers to help carry sandbags to areas where heavy flooding had occurred. Of those asked, 25 didn’t turn up at all. Those who couldn’t give a valid reason were sanctioned by having half of their €470 monthly allowance cut for three months.
Such work schemes are deeply controversial in Germany. Some argue they put “exploitation before integration”, as one paper put it. Pro Asyl, Germany’s largest pro-immigration NGO, has lobbied for all compulsory work to be scrapped and refugees to be granted immediate access to the job market.
The centre-left ruling coalition seems to agree, and is currently planning legislation that would remove legal obstacles for refugees to work, even if their right to stay has not been established. Under the plans, local authorities would have two weeks to respond to an employer who wants to hire an asylum seeker. If there is no response, the company can go ahead. In other words, if authorities are overwhelmed, the market can hire people regardless.
In principle, access to a new labour pool may be desirable given Germany’s acute skills shortage. In practice, it isn’t going to solve the problem. How many doctors, care workers or engineers are among the asylum seekers is not only a complete coincidence but also unknowable until their applications have been processed, a task that isn’t made easier by the fact that the majority of refugees arrive without papers. This year, 57% didn’t even have a passport, never mind university or vocational certificates. Local authorities stand no chance of undertaking even basic security checks in two weeks under those conditions.
Authorities are also meant to ensure that the conditions of employment are comparable to German standards. The idea is to avoid exploitation and wage depression — neither of which can happen under unrealistic processing deadlines. What’s more, at present only half of asylum applications are granted, making the other half of new arrivals illegal immigrants with no right to be in the country but potentially contracted to work in it. It doesn’t seem right that a qualified worker considering moving to Germany through a regular visa would face significantly higher hurdles.
Germany’s high number of refugees and its skills shortage are both huge and complicated issues that demand an honest debate, especially given the heated political climate in the country. But the answer is not to conflate the two.
Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and writer. She is the author, most recently, of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990.
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SubscribeTo those people who welcome immigrants, a question. What is your end point? Do they become German in all but skin colour (complete integration), or do they coalesce into groups within their own culture (protected from criticism by legislation)?
Unity or diversity; which one leads to a more stable country and better life for its citizens?
I support immigration 100%. Illegal immigration and open borders is an entirely different matter. I live in a small rural community, and we have a lot of new Indian and Filipino immigrants. They work tremendously hard and have benefited the community in many different ways. But we are way off the beaten track here and the immigrants we get are coming for one reason only – to work hard and improve their life.
Suppose they work hard, pay their taxes and improve their lives; should they then have the power to demand cultural changes from the indigenous population? Or should they keep their beliefs strictly private? For example, the status of women; something dear to the hearts of your typical Western country, but a practise of which many immigrants didn’t seem to get the memo.
Absolutely no one should impose their personal or religious beliefs on others IMO. With a functional immigration system, radicals can be easily weeded out with proper vetting. With a functional immigration system, you can ensure everyone who comes over has a job waiting for them, social support, and that they can understand the language. You can make sure the housing stock is not overwhelmed with an influx of too many people. The problem is open borders, not immigration itself.
With a functional immigration system, radicals can be easily weeded out with proper vetting.
In la la land maybe-both a “functional” system and “weeding out”.Sort of statement that flows out of the mouths of politicians who have no idea of the practicalities of designing and operatig such a system.Strikes me that the only functional system that works is/was that adopted by Australia in physically turning back boats and deporting illegals therefore ensuring that only applicants via the official chanells have a chance-and no documents=no asylum.
Here in Bklyn, where I live, it’s chock-a-block with immigrants. And I like it that way.
But our governments are not capable of even the most simple control over anything. It’s not right to depend on chance when so many of our fellow citizens, who we share this nation with, are so upset about this issue.
Also there are some aspects of assimilation that create difficult legal and moral problems. I’ve seen too many happy little Muslim girls, the ones who play with my dog, disappear under columns of black cloth, never to be actually seen in public again. That offends me as a Westerner and an American. But far worse is the fate of those girls.
The usual story of assimilation is that public schooling and life in a mixed society guarantees that the children speak English and live their lives within the greater culture. That’s not happening with the chador-ed and veiled ones.
Absolutely no one should impose their personal or religious beliefs on others IMO.
I agree, but once there enough people holding a certain religious or cultural view, then it’s impossible to stop. Also, in UK – not sure about other countries – any attempt to stop this happening will result in cries of ‘racist’.
Germany pays €48.2 billion a year on immigrants…literally the definition of a nation building its own funeral pyre. Madness, literally.
Agreed. I can’t think of a single rational reason to pay people who come into a country illegally a €470 monthly allowance each & not even expect them to work in exchange? That’s the same amount some _workers_ earn per month. And presumably they don’t pay for rent or food? Ie it’s spending money (I’m asking not assuming)?
The ulterior motive has got to be wanting to attract illegal immigration else I can’t see that anyone could be that stupid?
I think the answer is either hate or greed. Some want cheap foreign labour because it makes them personally richer, while leaving everyone poorer. And some hate Germany, Europe, white people, and see this as an opportunity for their own group to colonise and gain power. Islamic supremacists, for example, don’t hide their motivations. Same with a lot of third world activists. It’s about their people.
Try as I might, I just can’t fathom why Germany, or the west in general, is doing this.
there’s multiple factions who want it, all with different motivations. But mainly it’s short sighted greed in the business world, or hatred of white people on the left.
Yes I agree. It’s not so much the left like immigrants – it’s more they know the right dislike them. My enemy’s enemy is friend.
First, people shortage, birth rate below replacement goes against the entire economic model in the West. Second, American political hegemony forces Europe to replicate American immigration models, for the sake of increasing American markets and profits. Third, since the West has lost its traditional values and religion, replacing Europeans with Middle easterners is no brainer , they are cheap and there’s a lot of them, it just doesn’t matter especially if you live in a gated community
I was always sceptical of conspiracy theories but I think explanation has two parts
1) Left, mostly Neo-Marxists, which lost their battle to destroy West via communist ideology, uses mass immigration and attached idiocies like DEI, multiculti, gender to achieve their aim.
2) Global elites want destruction of nation states with cohesive cultures, history and values to achieve their aim of modern feudalism.
They are happy with moronic left and their idiocies because its keep young from focusing on real problems like declining incomes and lack of housing.
Thanks Victor. Succinctly and well put. It says it all.
If I recall, Douglas Murray estimates annual cost of mass immigration to uk at over 100 billion pounds in his book “Slow death of Europe”.
I don’t believe that figure quoted here reflects real cost to Germany.
If Germany, Italy and France want these people regardless of how mad that is is one thing.
But they expect countries like Poland, which sealed its Eastern border while accepting many millions of Ukrainians to accept quotas of people they let in or face fines of 20k Euro per “refugee”
While stopping agreed funds for Poland till “correct” government was elected.
Welcome to Fourth Reich.
Sister of my daughter-in-law started working in the second month after arriving in England from Ukraine. I don’t really understand why you need knowledge of the language if you want to work.
I don’t know why you were downvoted. While knowing the language of the country is undoubtedly helpful, I can attest to what you said. Travelling a lot for work (and not only),, which means staying in hotels, I regularly meet Ukrainian women who work as chambermaids. They don’t speak the language of the respective country, but this doesn’t prevent them from being hardworking and reliable. They are also liked and respected by their colleagues and management alike. Btw, they all have higher qualifications than those needed for a chambermaid, but they accept their situation with dignity.
I can’t see why a young, able-bodied man, allegedly fleeing from war, cannot sweep the streets or perform any other task that doesn’t require specific qualification or knowledge of whatever language.
The narrative has been so far that Europe desperately needs people to do jobs that are in high demand and are not attractive for the local population (e.g. the already mentioned street-cleaning). Why these jobs are still vacant, while huge amounts of taxpayers’ money are paid to people who, in theory at least, are supposed to help the ailing European economies, is anyone’s guess. Or not.
These young, able-bodied Ukrainian men should quickly join their army which is in desperate need of resources rather than hiding in Western Europe and letting others do the dirty work.
When I wrote about able-bodied men *allegedly* fleeing from war, I meant men from Africa , the Middle East, etc. Maybe I was not clear enough, not referring to them explicitly, but my post was based on the topic of the article and El Uro’s comment about Ukrainian women v men from other countries (although his comparison was implicit).
Can we stop referring to everyone who immigrates as an asylum-seeker? This used to be a precise term; now, it’s become a catch-all for everything from people with papers to illegals.
At some point, it’s worth asking why all of these people did not go to a country with a culture and language much like their own? Why are they the responsibility of the West to house, feed, and employ, especially when many of them are hostile to the West, its culture, and its traditions? Their unwillingness to assimilate has been on display from the start. It’s not going to change because some people with that to be.
Didn’t Merkel say Europe can do it, with regard to immigration? I don’t recall her asking fellow Europeans.
However this isn’t the first time a popular and charismatic German leader has caused problems for Germany and Europe. One would hope twice is more than enough.
Everyone is inevitably self interested. No problem with that. Just keep it in mind when you design immigration policies.
The two should most certainly not be conflated or Germany will have the whole of Africa knocking on its door. The way to deal with the problem, which none of the great and the good seem to realise, is for the West to stop tormenting country after country in the Global South and forcing people to flee or giving people, who are needed in relatively stable countries, an excuse to flee.
If you overlay map of IQ of various groups on map of states, it becomes very clear why some countries are successful and others are hopeless.
Blaming it on the West is not helpful.
How many trillions of dollars West sent to Africa and there is still not a single functioning country?
Look at South Africa since blacks took control?
Falling apart.
And then it follows always the same lame story in the MSM of some immigrant who made it to Ivy league professor (i.e. the high IQ one) as an example of how important immigration would be. The remaining thousands of unemployed young men are not mentioned.