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IMMIGRATION

Paid social work ‘should help asylum seekers integrate’

Refugee experts from Austria’s nine states are meeting in Graz today, to discuss how to provide asylum seekers with employment and opportunities for integration through community work.

Paid social work 'should help asylum seekers integrate'
Refugees arriving on boats in the Mediterranean. UNHCR/Archilleas Zavallis

At present, asylum seekers are allowed to do some charitable relief work – for example working in parks and other green spaces, as well as maintaining sports facilities and cleaning work.

Styrian state councillor Doris Kampus (SPÖ) says she wants these non-profit activities to be extended to social services. She thinks asylum seekers could be gainfully employed helping out in care homes or taking elderly people for walks – but stresses that of course they “would never replace the professionals, that’s not our aim. This is really an integration policy. They want to help, they want to learn our language, and see how the system works… they want to give something back to Austrian society, and that’s a good thing.”

Asylum seekers will receive a maximum of €110 per month for such charitable work, which Kampus says would work out as around four or five euros an hour.

The refugee experts will also be discussing how refugees are processed when they first arrive in Austria, and have recommended that each refugee should have a detailed data card that provides information on their health, any trauma they have suffered and anything unusual in their history. This way, the experts say future problems can be easily avoided.

Austria saw a record 90,000 people apply for asylum last year, one of the highest levels per capita in Europe.

 

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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