Asylum seekers are generally permitted to work in Germany. However, this must be approved by the immigration authorities. The Federal Employment Agency provides a form for this purpose, entitled ‘Declaration of Employment’. Important: The form must be submitted each time asylum seekers take up a new position or even if there is a change in their working hours.
Asylum seekers initially have little effort to make with the application. They can submit the form to their employer, who must fill it out. Either the employer or the asylum seeker then submits it to the relevant immigration office. The authorities then take care of the rest. The immigration office forwards it to the Federal Employment Agency for review. The latter reviews it and informs the immigration office, which in practice takes three to four weeks. The immigration office can then approve or reject the employment relationship, for example if the applicants have committed a criminal offence.
Bureaucratic fossil
Sven Jäger from the Integration Office of the district of Tübingen considers the nationwide uniform application procedure for the ‘Declaration of Employment’ to be a ‘bureaucratic fossil’. It dates back to before 2018, when the Federal Employment Agency checked whether employers had to give priority to German job seekers. This is now ‘no longer an issue’ in almost all federal states. Now, the Federal Employment Agency only checks whether the wage offered is ‘customary for the industry and location’. This is not checked for Germans, who only have to be paid the minimum wage. In this context, Jäger recounts the ‘absurd’ situation in which a Swabian employer called him and said: ‘I have to pay the man from Nigeria more than my Swabian people!’
Download link for the ‘Declaration of Employment’:
https://www.arbeitsagentur.de/datei/erklaerung-zum-beschaeftigungsverhaeltnis_ba047549.pdf
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