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Germany: Asylum-seekers can work - if no German applies

01 November 2000

The government has announced plans to repeal the work ban on asylum seekers, refugees and foreigners with the legal status of Duldung (all asylum seekers who have been rejected in the asylum procedure but cannot be deported for various reasons all receive a pending status of "toleration"). The work ban was introduced in 1997 by the then conservative-liberal coalition government. After employment and social courts in several German cities decided in favour of asylum seekers and foreigners who initiated legal proceedings to win the right to work, and after a decision from 22 March 2000 from the social court in Lübeck ruled a general work ban illegal, the employment ministry had to repeal the 1997 regulation and commence talks on the details of new work provisions. The Employment Ministry, the Interior Ministry and Marieluise Beck, the official responsible for foreigners in Germany, agreed that asylum-seekers and "tolerated" foreigners will have access to the labour market after one year. Civil war and "traumatised" refugees are relieved of the one year ban and will be able to work immediately, if no German citizen is available for the job. The so-called Vorrangprüfung, or Inländer-Prinzip, stipulates that asylum-seekers and civil war refugees can only take up a job if no German, EU-citizen and other third country national with a more favourable position is available. Opinions on the right to work for asylum-seekers are still split in Germany. Whilst Christian Wagner, the conservative Hessian minister for Justice speaks of a "slap in the face for the unemployed", Dirk Niebel, the labour market expert for the liberal party commented that "there is no sensible reason" for the one year waiting period. The government says that the Inländer-Prinzip guaranteed that no German would be excluded from the employment market.

Migration und Bevölkerung, number 8 (November) 2000; Infodienst des Bayerischen Flüchtlingsrates, number 76 (November-December) 2000