Hundreds of thousands of people from Ukraine are seeking refuge in Germany. The rule applies: Where there are already many, more want to go. This is a problem for mayors and district administrators.
There were long faces in East Thuringia Greiz. Actually, a bus with 50 refugees from Ukraine should have arrived last Thursday, says District Administrator Martina Schweinsburg.
Everything had been prepared, volunteers had taken extra time off. What then didn’t come was the bus. Nobody called, Schweinsburg is annoyed. At some point in the late evening, the helpers left without having achieved anything.
While metropolises like Berlin already see themselves at the limit because of the many refugees from the Ukraine, comparatively few come to unknown places in the area – Greiz is not an isolated case. For example, Offenburg in Baden-Württemberg initially received far fewer people than announced. In the Franconian town of Diepersdorf, some refugees didn’t even want to get off the bus. There are also medium-term opportunities in some smaller places – empty apartments and vacancies, especially in East Germany.
“The distribution is not going smoothly”
“The process of distributing the expellees from Ukraine via the federal government is still not going smoothly,” says the President of the German District Association, Reinhard Sager. When buses arrive with far fewer people than expected, this complicates planning. Volunteers are frustrated.
Why this imbalance? The authorities still lack an overview of how many people from Ukraine are here and where they are staying. By Tuesday, around 278,000 refugees had been identified by the federal police, mostly women, children and the elderly. But everyone assumes much higher numbers. Because people with a Ukrainian passport can enter the country without a visa and stay for 90 days without registering.
Many only register when they need help with housing or care, or a work permit. As of Friday, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf) had only registered around 48,000 Ukrainian nationals as seeking protection, according to a spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior.
The attraction of Berlin
Berlin’s Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey sounded the alarm as early as mid-March because tens of thousands came to the capital by bus, train or car and emergency beds could hardly be kept up. By the beginning of this week, the state administration had provisionally accommodated 24,000 refugees – plus thousands who camped privately in guest rooms or on sofas. More than 16,000 Ukraine refugees have already received social benefits in Berlin.
In the meantime, however, the following applies: 95 percent of those arriving should be distributed to other places in the republic. “It’s going much better,” Giffey said now to “Bild”. “However, we still experience that refugees make their own way and also come back to Berlin. The attraction of the city is huge.” There was excitement when 120 refugees from a hostel in Berlin-Lichtenberg were to be distributed to other federal states on Monday. The Berlin CDU MP Danny Freimark accused the Senate of acting heartlessly. People didn’t want to leave.
Many hope to return soon
Some of the people who fled the war have settled in after a few days and are afraid to start again. Others cling to the hope of being able to return soon. “I think it’s a psychological moment to stay as close as possible to the border,” says Saxony-Anhalt’s Interior Minister Tamara Zieschang (CDU).
Somewhat well-known places simply have more appeal. This is not just because there are already many Ukrainians living in cities like Chemnitz, Dresden and Leipzig, says the President of the Saxon State Directorate, Regina Kraushaar. Some displaced persons feared being permanently stuck in rural areas. “We have to convince those affected that they are not only in good hands in big cities,” says the spokesman for the Saxon state directorate, Holm Felber.
It’s also about the money
Saxony-Anhalt has had similar experiences. According to Zieschang, there are already 15,197 Ukrainians there, including around 3,000 school-age children. “We are trying to achieve a certain distribution,” says the interior minister. But getting it right is difficult because so many come through private initiative.
Of course, for the municipalities, it is also about money. “Housing, care and integration will only succeed if the federal and state governments ensure the long-term financing of this task for society as a whole,” says Gerd Landsberg, general manager of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities. “There is pressure to act and time.”
The next prime ministers’ conference on April 7 should bring an agreement as to whether people should receive social benefits like Hartz IV recipients or more benefits like asylum seekers. It should also depend on how the distribution is controlled. Roughly speaking, the federal government pays for benefits under SGB II, but the recipients are allowed to move. For asylum seekers, however, locality applies. That would be a lever to move war refugees to places where there is affordable housing, day-care centers and jobs.
Refugees use their networks
But experts urge caution. In 2015, refugees were also distributed in structurally weak regions with above-average unemployment rates, says migration expert Herbert Brücker from the Nuremberg Institute for Labor Market and Occupational Research. It would make more sense in the long term to accommodate them in larger cities, because there they would be integrated more quickly into the labor market.
“The freedom to settle where it is most suitable for them must be preserved, because the refugees from Ukraine can then use their networks,” agrees Petra Bendel, Chair of the Advisory Council on Integration and Migration. If it is distributed, then transparent communication is also part of it – “there is still a problem in some cases.” It is right to ramp up integration measures again, because for many refugees there is little prospect of a quick return to the destroyed cities of Ukraine.
Some East German regions that have long struggled with emigration could offer permanent homes. In any case, the district of Greiz still has room. By Monday he had registered 215 refugees. “We have living space for 364 people,” says District Administrator Schweinsburg.
Source: Stern
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