“Logistical challenge”
Municipalities warn against benefits in kind for asylum seekers
October 6, 2023, 7:35 a.m
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Accommodating asylum seekers causes immense problems for many German municipalities. Numerous politicians are now calling for benefits in kind to be issued instead of cash. That would be a huge effort, complains Verena Göppert from the City Council. Even a technical solution would hardly help.
In the debate about benefits in kind instead of cash for asylum seekers, the Association of Cities warned of high costs for municipalities. “It is already legally possible to give out benefits in kind instead of money to asylum seekers. The fact that hardly any municipality practices this is due to the high administrative burden,” said the association’s deputy general manager, Verena Göppert, to the newspapers of the Funke media group. Economics Minister Robert Habeck told “Spiegel” that municipalities needed support on the issue of migration.
Göppert further said that it would be a “huge logistical challenge for cities” to regularly supply many decentralized facilities with food, clothing and other everyday items. “Although a cash card or prepaid card, which is currently being discussed, is easier to use compared to benefits in kind, a card solution would not be feasible without additional effort for the cities.” There will always be individual benefits under the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act that cannot be processed using such cards. “For this to happen, approval with cash benefits would have to be organized on a case-by-case basis.”
The FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr had previously called on the states to clear the way for prepaid payment cards for asylum seekers by the next Prime Minister’s Conference on November 6th. “Irregular migration must come down – to achieve this, cash payments must be stopped quickly,” Dürr told the “Bild” newspaper. If nothing happens by November 6th, “we won’t even have to talk about federal tax money.”
Habeck: Refugees should be able to work faster
Habeck told “Spiegel” that the federal government had to respond to the issue of migration in an appropriate way in keeping with reality. “When people now always talk about the load limit, we have to relieve the burden. The municipalities support them. Certainly financially, but not only.” Mayors told him that they hardly knew how to accommodate refugees anymore. “In order to relieve the burden on the immigration authorities, we will, for example, extend the residence permits for Ukrainians as soon as this is permitted by EU law. And the refugees who are already here should be integrated into the labor market more quickly.”
The federal government’s migration commissioner, Reem Alabali-Radovan, also called for accelerated access to the labor market for refugees. “We should enable all refugees to integrate in a low-threshold and uncomplicated manner,” said the SPD politician to the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”. “This includes the abolition of work bans and quick access to integration courses.”
According to the former President of the Federal Constitutional Court, Hans-Jürgen Papier, the current asylum law does not meet the current challenges. With a view to the planned European asylum reform, he also demanded in the Funke newspapers that the right to apply for asylum “can no longer be misused as a door opener and as a justification for immigration that is illegal in itself.” The implementation of the complex asylum procedures, even for the many people who obviously had no right to asylum and international protection, “was and is dysfunctional and objectively an abuse of the law,” he said. In Papier’s opinion, whether a claim for protection can even be considered should be decided before entering the EU and before crossing the border.