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WITHUnsafe and positive thinking is more pleasant than blackmailing and nagging. In the best of cases, other people can even become infected, which can change reality in a positive way. In theory, that could explain why social organizations are now particularly interested in emphasizing how well refugees can integrate: In the five years since Chancellor Merkel’s “We can do it,” they have made much better progress than expected.
Unfortunately, this point of view is particularly noteworthy because the same stakeholders usually only paint the social conditions in the darkest colors. The Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband has just put on another layer: “Millions of people” are “disconnected, excluded and left behind”. Thus, accompanied by the usual political echo, he summarizes his most recent inventory of Hartz IV basic security.
Whose exclusion is it?
There is not a word in it about refugees and migration. Official statistics from the Federal Employment Agency show that today almost one million people – adults and children – from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries of origin of asylum earn a living from Hartz IV benefits. That’s around 800,000 more than before the great refugee and migration movement of 2015. Since then, the number of German Hartz IV beneficiaries has dropped by one million.
One would like to know more precisely who the association is complaining about here. Or: What exactly is successful integration when you see 800,000 people from countries at war trapped in a supposedly inhuman Hartz IV system? Instead, some quotes from pronouncements on the state of integration: The Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband sees “positive developments”. And “Pro Asyl” finds: This was “much more successful than pessimists and racists would have hoped.”
But the Diakonie also offers interesting things: on Monday they announced that they saw integration on the right track. “Not only the German labor market benefits from this, but also our social security funds.” And on Tuesday he again added to the lament of the parity of Hartz IV. “The beneficiaries are getting poorer. At the same time, the number of poor people is increasing ”, says Diakonie.
The annoyance of distorted images
As usual, it was not mentioned that this claim would be extremely factual without the 800,000 new refugees who had entered the Hartz IV system. The demand for a standard monthly fee of 100 euros more for each adult and each child (plus an immediate surcharge of 200 euros) seems more attractive when it comes across the misconception that more and more Germans have fallen from prosperity to prosperity. desperate poverty.
What’s annoying about these lobbyists for the welfare state and their cartoons is that they avoid specific disputes about progress and deficits in refugee integration and the need for labor market reforms and integration policy. How to reasonably debate at what points the integrative forces of the welfare state could be strengthened when the loudest commentators don’t even want to know which groups of people are involved?
Integrated as forecast
After all, if you look seriously, you can see that the integration of former asylum seekers into the labor market has been roughly as experts expected since 2015. The employment agency once assumed that half of the refugees who could work would take five years to find a job. After 15 years, an employment rate of 70 percent can be expected, which corresponds to the level of other immigrants who have lived in Germany longer.
In fact, 35 percent of all economically active people who made it to the asylum route now have jobs. If you only look at those who have lived here for five years, the rate is 50 percent. There has been some confusion recently: beyond a group of highly skilled immigrants, who are in high demand in the healthcare sector, for example, most work in simple jobs, such as in the hospitality industry, where now a particularly large number of jobs are being lost or at risk.
However, the answer to this can only be provided by a policy that makes even more effort to keep employment and integration barriers low. And when it comes to Hartz IV: Why not finally reduce anti-performance deductions by up to 90 percent for those who want to gradually get out of unemployment with small jobs?
On the other hand, putting them against the welfare state with slogans in favor of an unconditional basic income with standard rates “poverty proof” does not guarantee that it is a positive integration policy. A complaint from the welfare state exploiting refugees for ideological purposes is simply regrettable.
