Cuts incomprehensible
City council sounds the alarm about integration courses
October 12, 2024, 3:34 a.m
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Integration is required everywhere from migrants who come to Germany. But it shouldn’t cost as much as possible: in the current budget draft, the budget for corresponding courses is being drastically reduced. The President of the City Council warns.
From the perspective of the German Association of Cities, cuts in funding for integration courses are unacceptable. In the Funke media group’s newspapers, President Markus Lewe called for all planned cuts to be reversed and even more funding to be made available instead. “We cannot demand rapid integration from immigrants on the one hand and at the same time the federal government is cutting integration courses on the other,” said Lewe.
He pointed out that the number of course participants will remain roughly the same next year. Many refugees are obliged to take part – and there are already too few offers and the waiting lists are long. “How the course providers, including many municipal providers and adult education centers, are supposed to manage this with half of the funds is a mystery to us,” said Lewe. Only 500 million euros will be made available in the federal budget for the courses in 2025 instead of 1.1 billion euros this year.
More courses, not fewer
For Lewe, the courses are an important step so that people can get to know the German language and culture as quickly as possible. They were also aimed at skilled workers who were to be recruited for the German labor market. The President of the City Council referred to waiting times that often lasted months before immigrants could attend a course. “We actually need more resources for integration courses, not less,” he emphasized. Cuts are therefore absolutely incomprehensible.
The courses are financed from the budget of the SPD-led Federal Ministry of the Interior. The Greens had also already expressed criticism of possible cuts. At the end of September, the police union and Verdi had already sounded the alarm about the planned cuts. The integration courses are “urgently needed,” it said in a joint statement. “With the debt brake tightened, we won’t get one meter further,” emphasized the trade unionists.