Tag: vouchers

Restriction instead of welcome: grand coalition decides package of measures against refugees

https://iwspace.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/proasyl.jpg?resize=327%2C246Translated by IWS from Pro Asyl: The federal government has agreed on Sunday in the coalition committee on a package of measures on asylum policy. Under the rubric “remove disincentives” several measures of deterrence policy of the nineties have been reactivated.
On Saturday, the government had allowed with a generous gesture several thousand refugees stranded at the Budapest Central Station to enter Germany, but already on Sunday the grand coalition presented a decision which contains numerous restrictive measures, among other things.

Deterrence policy as in the nineties
To avoid alleged “disincentives”, asylum seekers will in future have to stay six months instead of three in the Erstaufnahmelagern (first Reception Centers). The measure will be accompanied by the decision to impose again the Residenzpflicht to the people crammed in the Erstaufnahmelagern. The residence obligation (Residenzpflicht) that forbids them to move freely in the Federal territory. Furthermore the refugees will again receive vouchers and food parcels – according to the motto: Eat what comes from the office. In this way several instruments of deterrence and exclusion policies of the nineties, which had been liberalized step by step only in recent years, are reactivated.
The six-month placement in first Reception Centers will exacerbate the already disastrous accommodation situation. To increase the accommodation capacity two or threefold of the existing facilities will create unbearable living conditions for thousands of people, fuelling conflicts within the facilities themselves, marginalizing and stigmatizing those affected. The promise of the federal government to increase the capacity of the Reception Centers of about 45,000 to 150,000 will be impossible to achieve in the short term.