“According to an NDR television report, illicit work is being done by at least 100,000 of Germany’s recently-arrived asylum seekers. Many profiteers may include eateries, discos and householders the program claimed.
The “NDR Info” program reported it had learned from social workers and refugee helpers that up to 30 percent of the 1.1 million refugees who arrived in Germany last year were working without being properly registered with the authorities.
NDR suggested that at least 100,000 were working in this way without their employers making sure that health and pension contributions and taxes were being paid into Germany’s elaborate social welfare system.
“Many profit from the plight of refugees,” said Emilia Mitrovic of the German DGB trade union federation’s advisory center in Hamburg, referring to employers who dodged welfare payments. Most of the work involved menial tasks.
The report comes five days ahead of a litmus-test regional state election in Mecklenberg-West Pomerania, Germany’s Baltic Sea state that was once part of communist East Germany.
New integration law
A new integration law, effective from 6 August, is supposed to make it easier for asylum seekers to find legal work. Social workers say it is a start but it will not greatly cut “Schwarzarbeit” the German word for illicit or undeclared employment.
There are no official figures available according to the program but ten cases were being uncovered each month by Germany’s customs service which has increasingly pursued illegal employment in recent years.” Read more ..
