New asylum seekers will be able to work in Germany in a time after six months of their arrival in the country. The German government has introduced a new draft law allowing asylum seekers quicker access to the labor market. This law would be docked into an ongoing legislative process in the Bundestag (lower house). The federal government hopes that this will result in higher employment for asylum seekers.
There are essentially three major changes that have been announced for the new asylum seeker law. Which are:
- In the future, asylum seekers in initial reception centers should be allowed to work after just three or six months instead of nine;
- the second change concerns the tolerance (Duldung) that rejected asylum seekers can receive in the case of employment or training: foreigners who came to Germany by December 31, 2022, should be able to benefit from this. Previously the deadline was August 31, 2018.
- in the future, immigration authorities should generally give their consent to the employment of tolerated foreigners. At the moment, this is only an optional regulation that is at the discretion of the authority.
Read here more about Germany’s new Asylum Law as part one regulations
courtesy visa-guru.com
In addition to the change in the deadline, the draft provides for further relief for employment toleration. In the future, it will require previous employment subject to social security contributions for 12 instead of 18 months, and regular working hours must only be 20 instead of 35 hours per week. Other hurdles – such as fully securing one’s livelihood through one’s own means – remain high.
Ultimately, according to the cabinet decision, tolerated people should generally receive an employment permit in the future. So far this has been at the discretion of the immigration authorities.
Current work permission statistics for asylum seekers
In the first six months of this year, the immigration authorities denied a work permit in around 1,200 cases. This emerges from figures from the federal government, which go back to a regular request from Clara Bünger from the Left parliamentary group. As of June 30, 2023, almost 35,000 tolerated persons had an employment permit, of which around 3,100 were issued in the first half of the year. The work permit was rejected in 237 cases. Of the asylum seekers, there were around 21,000 with a work permit, of which a good 9,000 were granted in the first half of the year alone. On the other hand 563 were rejected.
Recently, little use has been made of employment toleration: in mid-2023, 3,382 people, including family members, had employment toleration – of which 2,406 were employees. At the end of June 2023, there were 224,768 people with toleration who were required to leave the country.
The political details of the new asylum law
The work relief for asylum seekers and tolerated people is part of the migration package, the key points of which were agreed upon by the leaders of the SPD, Greens, and FDP in the traffic light government three weeks ago. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) introduced the first part in the cabinet last week with changes to the law intended to enable faster deportations of rejected asylum seekers.