2024-08-01 22:13:42
Citizens’ allowance
Union for Hardship for Refugees: from learning to park maintenance?
Updated on 31.07.2024 – 18:12Reading time: 4 min.
Should refugees receive less money and be pushed more to work? Especially if they come from Ukraine? Demands to this effect from the Union have met with fierce criticism.
In the CDU and CSU, calls for cuts in benefits for asylum seekers and Ukrainian war refugees are growing louder. CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt called for “a new social benefits system for asylum seekers”. This should be set below the citizen’s allowance. The parliamentary manager of the Union faction, Thorsten Frei (CDU), said: “The excesses in the citizen’s allowance and in the integration measures for asylum seekers leave many people speechless.”
Dobrindt told the “Bild” newspaper: “Anyone who refuses to do reasonable work must expect to see their benefits cut.” SPD interior politician Helge Lindh accused Dobrindt of “unspeakable populism” in the newspapers of the Bavarian Media Group. The benefits under the Asylum Seekers’ Benefits Act should not be reduced under constitutional law because a dignified existence would then no longer be possible. “If the Union listened more to experts in immigration authorities and job centers and less to the power of resentment, everyone would benefit.”
There have been calls for lower state transfers to Ukrainian war refugees for some time. FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai, for example, has called for newly arrived Ukrainians to no longer be granted citizen’s allowance, but rather benefits under the Asylum Seekers’ Benefits Act. Brandenburg’s Interior Minister Michael Stübgen (CDU) has argued that citizen’s allowance has become a “brake on taking up work”. The Federal Ministry of Labor, on the other hand, argued that citizen’s allowance and thus the responsibility of the job centers would enable faster and more precise integration into the labor market. This would also be useful for Germany in view of the shortage of skilled workers.
The war refugees from Ukraine were – as in other EU countries – accepted in Germany in accordance with the so-called mass influx directive. Shortly after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the EU activated the directive in March 2022. Those affected therefore did not have to apply for asylum. However, Germany had called for a fairer distribution of refugees in Europe, as a particularly large number of those affected lived in Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic. The Ukrainian refugees receive citizen’s allowance – asylum seekers receive benefits under the Asylum Seekers’ Benefits Act. Only when they are recognized as refugees do they also have the right to citizen’s allowance – if they are in need.
In the fall, Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) announced a program to help Ukrainian refugees and other asylum seekers find regular jobs in the primary labor market more quickly and sustainably. The “Job Turbo” 2024 was launched – job centers, municipalities, states, companies and associations have been working together since then. Among other things, additional workers in the job centers are looking after the refugees. It was only in mid-January that the federal budget for 2024 was passed and fresh money was released for it.
A large proportion of the Ukrainians placed work in assistant jobs, for example in the kitchen, housekeeping or care. In the Nuremberg region, for example, around 40 percent took up jobs that would also require training or a degree in Germany. But 60 percent were placed in assistant jobs, the head of the Nuremberg job center, Renata Häublein, told Bayerischer Rundfunk. The federal special representative for the “Job Turbo”, Daniel Terzenbach from the board of the Federal Employment Agency, told BR that in April, around 6,800 refugees from Ukraine had a job in the primary labor market nationwide. That was more than twice as many as in April 2023. At that time, around 2,850 Ukrainians were in work.
In July, Heil referred to figures from the employment agency, according to which 192,000 Ukrainians were in employment subject to social insurance contributions in this country. 48,000 were in marginal employment. In November, Heil had given a total figure of 400,000 refugees who had completed their integration course or were about to do so and would then be available to the labor market. Heil called on companies not to place too high demands on the refugees’ language skills: “Even those who do not yet speak our language perfectly can get off to a successful start.”
FDP politician Pascal Kober advocated a greater differentiation among benefit recipients overall. “It is time to question whether we do not need different regulations in the citizen’s allowance for the various groups affected,” said the FDP labor market expert to the “Rheinische Post”. A distinction could be made between top-up recipients who rely on citizen’s allowance in addition to their work, long-term unemployed people who often have many health problems, and immigrants. A spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of Labor replied: “I do not know on what basis one should set certain rates for members of certain ethnic groups, for example.” Nevertheless, the government now wants to make legal adjustments for individual cases.