After the first few months, one of Germany’s pilot projects—requiring unemployed asylum seekers to enroll in community service or have their social benefits cut—has produced abysmal results, as every other migrant with work obligations refused to show up, despite the incentives and threat of sanctions.
The data was reported by Udo Recktenwald, the CDU district administrator of St. Wendel in Saarland, which joined three other CDU-led districts this spring in expanding a program launched last year, hoping to serve as a successful integration model that could be later implemented across the country.
The idea is that asylum seekers who are issued compulsory community service hours would be more compelled to find actual jobs, accelerating their integration into German society. Regularly showing up for the service (such as maintaining public parks) is also incentivized through preferential access to German language classes, while disregarding the order carries the risk of having their social benefits cut or eliminated.
Despite all this, the program doesn’t seem to fulfill the expectations. According to the first interim assessment of the St. Wendel ‘experiment,’ only about half of the 56 migrants who were given a mandatory work order since April fulfilled their obligations—most of the others simply refused to work.
Many called in sick for weeks, and even more were just absent without excuse. Six ‘participants’ who disappeared completely already had their entire social benefit cut, while seven migrants had their monthly allowance halved as a result of non-compliance. Similar measures are being prepared against a dozen others, Recktenwald said.
The whole program—aiming to eventually enroll 200 asylum seekers in community service by next year—reportedly costs €150,000 in St. Wendel alone. Despite the initial setback, the CDU administrator is still optimistic that it will turn out to be a “model” for nationwide roll-out in the future.
The other three districts that launched the program a year earlier reported similar problems, though some showed better results than others during their first evaluation last summer.
Burgenland district in Saxony-Anhalt, in particular, had to go through nearly a hundred applicants to fill its 36 positions, as two out of three refused to show up. Of the 60 who didn’t comply, 54 were subjected to reduced social benefits, while 4 were given exemptions due to illness.
The limited trial of the Mansfeld-Südharz district (also in Saxony-Anhalt) fared somewhat better, as only 15 migrants refused to help out in the aftermath of last year’s flood, out of 64 that were called in. The district also paid them a modest sum, which, to be honest, might have helped the attendance.
The Saale-Orla district in Thuringia, the first to implement the model, is still cited as a success story, despite only 30 of the 110 participants moving on to full-time positions in the first year, which was the project’s ultimate goal. Granted, the district only imposed financial sanctions in 19 cases—including fully cutting the benefits of six migrants who are suspected of having relocated elsewhere—which means four in five fulfilled their obligations.
This limited success gives hope to all the other administrators who struggle to maintain the numbers and rack up more administrative costs than the value the program creates.
At the same time, the leftist parties—particularly the socialist SPD, the Greens, and the far-left Linke—remain strongly opposed to such an initiative, arguing that being in compulsory community service keeps these migrants from entering the real workforce.
