Germany: 10 years of 'Integration Act' for refugees
The German Integration Act aimed to regulate the integration of recognized refugees following high levels of immigration, facilitating access to the labor market in return for integration efforts.
In early 2016, a phrase called the "divided society" circulated in Germany, reflecting the polarized opinions of the public on the issue of refugees and immigrants. Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government, comprising the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) alongside the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), sought to mend the rift by introducing the Integration Act, a law aimed at balancing support and challenge for all parties involved.
The Integration Act, which came into effect after the mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year's Eve 2015, sought to address the concerns of both those advocating strong regulatory policies and those who felt it imposed too many demands. While some deemed it too lenient, offering too many giveaways, others felt it was too demanding, with high requirements for temporary residence permits for vocational training.
Key provisions of the Integration Act included expanding integration and language courses, allowing rejected asylum seekers to enter the labor market through a vocational training program, and imposing sanctions on those who refused to participate in language and integration courses. The Act also aimed to distribute refugees evenly across Germany to prevent over-concentration in major cities.
However, the residency requirement had a negative impact on integration, with Herbert Brücker, head of the Research Department for Migration, Integration and International Labour Studies at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), stating that people were disproportionately allocated to economically weak regions with high unemployment. This, in turn, negatively affected labor market integration.
Despite these challenges, Brücker expressed a positive view on the vocational training policy, stating that it allowed rejected refugees to complete their vocational training, which ultimately contributed to their integration into society. He also noted that Germany's employment rates among refugees were around 65% to 67%, placing the country at the top of European rankings alongside Norway.
Ten years after the Integration Act's implementation, the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) have partially scrapped plans to severely restrict access to integration courses for those without a secure prospect of remaining in the country. This move aims to make integration courses more accessible to a wider range of refugees.
According to Brücker, integration courses are a relatively inexpensive tool for integration, increasing employment rates by five to ten percentage points after completion. Cutting funding for these courses would not save money but rather prolong reliance on benefits and hinder integration. If he were to refine the Integration Act, Brücker would suggest relaxing the residency requirement after asylum proceedings, initiating integration courses just one month after arrival, and expediting asylum proceedings to integrate protection status refugees more quickly while also enabling the deportation of those without protection status more swiftly.
Written by urgent.news from DW News's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
