Exactly four years after the World Social Summit:

As „insincere and populistic“ describes the Nation-wide Human Rights Organisation for Refugees PRO ASYL the refusal of the Federal Department of Employment, to carry out the legally specified adaptation of the benefits for asylum seekers to the increased costs of living and to order the suspension of the general prohibition of employment as regards the so-called Bluem Decree of May 15th, 1997.

„Thus the Red-Green Government also ignores – despite of differently sounding announcements in the period of its opposition – the results and obligations of the UN-World Summit on Social Development of Copenhagen in early March 1995 , which declared exactly 4 years ago the guarantee of participation and the access of particularly disadvantaged groups to the economic, social, cultural and political life of the society as a priority of all politics“, said Heiko Kauffmann, spokesperson of the Nation-wide Human Rights Organisation for Refugees PRO ASYL.

PRO ASYL had demanded already in December 1998 a clear adaptation of the benefits for asylum seekers to the increased costs of living according to § 3 Art. 3 of the Act on Benefits for Asylum seekers at January 1st, 1999. In a letter of the Federal Department of Employment addressed to PRO ASYL it is said now, that isn’t correct, that the increase would have always been „forgotten“ within the past years. On the contrary the adaptation of the benefits has been checked repeatedly. However, a need for increase has been denied.

„For PRO ASYL it is incomprehensible, on which base this examination should have been carried out. The Federal Office for Statistics has stated an increase of the consumer prices for the years 1993 to 1998, which moves between 4.5% in 1993 and 0.9% in 1998. Already from this results the necessity of adaptation. Also the normal benefit rates during the period of comparison have been – although insufficiently – increased, said Heiko Kauffmann…

Just as „insincerely and populistically“ acts the new Federal Government with the retention of a general prohibition of employment for asylum seekers. Although the Social Courts in Itzehoe und Lübeck have established in the meantime the illegality of the underlying Bluem decree, criticised sharply at that time by the SPD opposition, would a Socialdemocrat Department of Employment repeat the position based on prejudices of the predecessor government. „Also in the case of a withdrawal of the Bluem decree the priority of native and other privileged employees would be valid furthermore. The labour offices must check the individual case as before May 1997“.

One won’t be fobbed off with text modules and back intensively asylum seekers at appeals to the Social Courts within the coming months, Heiko Kauffmann continued. It cannot be accepted, that asylum-seekers are refused the work permit meanwhile regularly also for still so insignificant employment of weekly few hours.

At this the reproach of „inadmissible forced labour“ by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) must also anew be checked. The ILO identified in a statement of the middle eighties the German combination of a strict prohibition of employment and the obligation to public useful work allowed by Federal Social Security Act as inadmissible forced labour…

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