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IMMIGRATION

Experts: Asylum seekers should have right to work

The Catholic charity Caritas is calling for asylum seekers to be allowed to work whilst they are waiting for their asylum applications to be approved.

Experts: Asylum seekers should have right to work
A Syrian mother and her son. Photo: UNHCR

Of the 50,000 refugees who are expected to come to Austria this year, many of them will be forced to do nothing whilst they wait for a decision on whether they can stay – a process which can take years. 

Due to strict regulations currently just 200 asylum seekers (out of 35,000) have a work permit, and 106 of those are for apprenticeships. The majority of those work in the hospitality industry.

Hanan Mesleh fled from Palestine with her daughter, four years ago. She speaks Arabic, Hebrew, English and Russian and has a master's degree. She worked as a journalist before leaving Palestine but is not allowed to work in Austria because she doesn’t yet have a positive decision on her application for asylum.

She told the Kurier newspaper that when she lived in Upper Austria she worked two or three times a week for a charity, which was unpaid. Now she lives in Vienna in community housing run by Caritas and does some work as a translator, again unpaid.

She and her daughter have to live on €200 a month, and she can’t afford to spend money on necessary dental treatment for her daughter. “I’m very happy that I’m able to live safely in Austria, but this situation is frustrating,” she told the Kurier.

Three months after an asylum application has been accepted in Austria, the asylum seeker should legally be allowed to work but Caritas says that in reality this is very rare. “In fact it’s severely restricted,” Klaus Schwertner, the Secretary General of Caritas Vienna, said.

Since 2004 the rules have been tightened for short-term work permits for seasonal and harvest work and low-paid charitable work. Working also comes with the risk that if you earn more than €110 you end up losing basic health insurance once the job finishes.

Schwertner and representatives from other charities want asylum seekers to be allowed to work after six months of legal residence in Austria. “It is neither socially nor economically useful for people to be forced to do nothing for years,” he said. He added that having access to employment is one of the best forms of integration.

Social Minister Rudolf Hundstorfer has said that for him the priority is getting people who have been granted asylum into work as soon as possible. Currently 2650 Syrians, 2741 Afghans and 481 Somalis are listed as unemployed.

Since 2013 asylum seekers under the age of 25 have been allowed to do an apprenticeship – previously the age limit was 18. Permits are only granted for professions which currently lack apprentices.

Sadly, prostitution is one of the few employment opportunities where asylum seekers do find work. At the end of 2013, out of almost 3,400 registered prostitutes in Vienna 1.6 percent of those were asylum seekers, according to police data.

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FAR-RIGHT

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Radical Austrian nationalist Martin Sellner has been banned from entering Germany, it emerged on Tuesday, days after he was deported from Switzerland.

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Sellner, a leader of Austria’s white pride Identitarian Movement, posted a video of himself on X, formerly Twitter, reading out a letter he said was from the city of Potsdam.

A spokeswoman for the city authorities confirmed to AFP that an EU citizen had been served with a “ban on their freedom of movement in Germany”.

The person can no longer enter or stay in Germany “with immediate effect” and could be stopped by police or deported if they try to enter the country, the spokeswoman said, declining to name the individual for privacy reasons.

READ ALSO: Who is Austria’s far-right figurehead banned across Europe?

“We have to show that the state is not powerless and will use its legitimate means,” Mike Schubert, the mayor of Potsdam, said in a statement.

Sellner caused an uproar in Germany after allegedly discussing the Identitarian concept of “remigration” with members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at a meeting in Potsdam in November.

Reports of the meeting sparked a huge wave of protests against the AfD, with tens of thousands of Germans attending demonstrations across the country.

READ ALSO:

Swiss police said Sunday they had prevented a hundred-strong far-right gathering due to be addressed by Sellner, adding that he had been arrested and deported.

The Saturday meeting had been organised by the far-right Junge Tat group, known for its anti-immigration and anti-Islamic views.

The group is also a proponent of the far-right white nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory espoused by Sellner’s Identitarian Movement.

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