The proposal by two Thuringian SPD district administrators to grant asylum seekers benefits only as loans has sparked debate. CDU politician Philipp Amthor considers it “worth examining,” while Thuringian SPD leader Georg Maier considers it “immature in terms of content.” Sharp criticism has come from the refugee organization Pro Asyl, which considers the proposal “anti-social” and “in all likelihood unconstitutional.”
On Thursday, SPD district administrators Matthias Jendricke and Marko Wolfram from Thuringia proposed that social benefits for adult asylum seekers, recognized refugees, and foreigners from non-EU countries be paid out as interest-free loans in the future. “We finally need a genuine willingness to reform on the part of Berlin politicians, not tinkering with an increasingly dysfunctional system,” Nordhausen district administrator Jendricke told Stern magazine. “Anyone who comes to our country and has not paid anything into the system so far should only receive social benefits as interest-free loans.”
According to Jendricke, the loan would work similarly to student loans: Those who quickly find work subject to social insurance contributions would only have to repay part of the benefits they received, the district administrator told Stern magazine. In addition, discounts should be granted for quick repayments. The district administrator of the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district, Marko Wolfram, added that the aim was to motivate migrants to take up work quickly.
According to Jendricke, refugees should have half of the loan waived if they find jobs within a year and pass a language test. " Children who successfully complete school could also be rewarded with a repayment bonus for their parents," he added. It is right “to raise the question of fairness,” said CDU politician Amthor, who is parliamentary state secretary in the Ministry of Digital Affairs, to Welt TV. After all, he said, these are payments made by the community “without anything having been paid into this welfare state in advance.”
The proposal does raise “a number of legal questions,” emphasized the CDU executive committee member. “But I find the basic idea interesting. Namely, to say that the focus is not just on distributing benefits to the community, but on creating incentives for integration and work. Because that helps everyone much more.”
The idea of the two district administrators could be “a real driver for integration and personal responsibility,” explained Daniel Peters, chairman of the CDU in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. He is very pleased “that the SPD is now also openly participating in such reform debates.” Legal issues must be examined, but there should be “no taboos.”
The SPD leadership in Thuringia takes a more critical view of the initiative. It is “immature in terms of content and raises constitutional questions,” explained SPD state leader and Interior Minister Maier. “Integration needs viable concepts, not risky experiments with social benefits.” However, Maier called the debate that has been sparked about how refugees can be integrated into the labor market more quickly “important and necessary.”
Pro Asyl calls it an “anti-social” proposal. It misjudges “reality and disregards fundamental rights,” emphasized Tareq Alaows, the organization's spokesperson on refugee policy. The Federal Constitutional Court has repeatedly ruled that guaranteeing a decent minimum standard of living in cases of need includes a legal right to material support. Granting citizen's benefit (bürgergeld) or other social benefits only as loans in the future would therefore be unconstitutional.
According to Alaows, paying asylum seekers' benefits as loans would also make integration more difficult. “Those who live in uncertainty and with debts have poorer chances of finding sustainable employment.”
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