The CSU in the Bundestag is demanding that war refugees from Ukraine be sent back to their homeland if they do not find work in Germany. “More than two years after the start of the war, the principle must now apply: take up work in Germany or return to safe areas of western Ukraine,” said CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt to “Bild am Sonntag”. The demand was sharply criticized by the SPD and the Greens.
SPD parliamentary group vice-chair Dirk Wiese told the paper that Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly bombs targets throughout Ukraine. “Dobrindt now wants to send women and children back here who may have already lost their fathers at the front. The CSU should be ashamed of such demands and should finally remove the C for Christian from its name.”
Green Party leader Omid Nouripour said: “The insinuation that Ukrainians are coming to us because of the citizen’s allowance ignores the horror of Putin’s war.” He also rejected the Union’s proposals not to grant Ukrainians citizen’s allowance immediately, but to first refer them to the regular asylum procedure. “Of course we have to get Ukrainians into work even faster. But new legal hurdles, like those the CDU wants, won’t help, they’ll do harm.”
Recently, several interior ministers had already demanded that the payment of citizen’s allowance to war refugees from Ukraine be stopped and that they only be granted lower payments under the Asylum Seekers’ Benefits Act. The federal government has already rejected this.
Dobrindt joined in the criticism of the current regulation. The citizen’s allowance was intended as a quick aid at the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, but has long since become a brake on work, said the CSU politician. It keeps too many people from Ukraine on welfare.
SPD labor market politician Martin Rosemann pointed out in the Bild am Sonntag that many of the Ukrainian refugees are single mothers: “The hurdles for Ukrainian refugees when starting their working lives are the lack of childcare, poor language skills and the lengthy recognition of professional qualifications.” He called the proposal to move them from the citizen’s allowance into the asylum process “populist nonsense.”
