Robert Habeck on Syrian refugees: If you don’t work, you should leave

For the Green Party’s candidate for chancellor, Robert Habeck, work is the central criterion for the prospects of refugee Syrians in Germany. “We can really use those who work here,” he said on Deutschlandfunk on Monday. About the others returning to their homeland, he said: “Those who don’t work here will – if the country is safe – be able or even have to return to safety.”

Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) had previously said something essentially the same and also mentioned training and good integration as criteria. From the perspective of the Union, work alone is not enough to stay in Germany. The income from work must also be enough to support the family if necessary and later receive a pension above the basic security, said the Parliamentary Managing Director of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Thorsten Frei.

Opposition came from the Green Youth. “Regardless of whether people from Syria work, go to school or raise children: they should be allowed to stay,” said the head of the Greens youth organization, Jette Nietzard, to the news portal “Politico”. “We must stand up for human rights at all times.”

According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, around 975,000 Syrians live in Germany. Most have come since 2015 as a result of the Syrian civil war. More than 300,000 of them have a subsidiary protection title. So they were not admitted because of individual persecution, but because of the civil war in their homeland. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf) recently decided not to decide on asylum applications from people from Syria for the time being due to the dynamic developments in the country.