The question of how to pay for shopping or dining out can lead to heated fundamental debates in this country. Some people believe that paying in cash makes illegal work and money laundering possible. “Cash is embossed freedom,” argue others who definitely don’t want coins and notes to ever disappear. All the better that in this country everyone can pay however they want. Or?
Politicians such as Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) and Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) are currently loudly demanding that asylum seekers should no longer receive their social benefits in cash, but rather have them transferred to a payment card. That sounds modern and could even make sense. However, it would be senseless and dangerous if refugees in the future no longer had access to cash and – even worse – would no longer be able to freely decide what was on their receipt.
There should be no two opinions about the fact that German authorities urgently need more digital solutions. When asylum seekers have to stand in queues every month to receive cash from the office or, even more grotesquely, a check that then has to be cashed at the bank, it sounds like a journey back in time to the last century. Unfortunately it is not – and therefore an untenable situation for employees in offices as well as for those affected themselves. A payment card for refugees who do not have a bank account is therefore indeed a welcome initiative. Hanover is currently experimenting in a model project with such a card that asylum seekers can use to pay cashless and also withdraw money.
And now comes the but: Far away from Lower Saxony’s capital, politicians with completely different intentions are becoming digitally savvy reformers in the current debate. As they openly announce, they are also (or above all) concerned with preventing people from fleeing to Germany. They argue that those who receive social benefits without cash and can only withdraw a small amount in cash, if at all, have a harder time transferring money to their countries of origin and paying people smugglers. In addition, at least according to the plan in Saxony, refugees should only be able to shop in certain stores with their new chip card. Alcohol, cigarettes or casinos could then be taboo for them.
Of course it is a problem when more people come to Germany than the municipalities can handle. The same applies to the fact that people sometimes stay in Germany for years until it is clarified whether they have a right to asylum. But now, in all seriousness, is a payment card supposed to solve the problems in German migration policy? That is absurd.
The current debate is not only unnecessary, but also dangerous
In order to support relatives at home on a large scale, the 182 euros in pocket money that single adult asylum seekers are entitled to per month in this country is not enough anyway. And anyone who lives as a refugee in this country and has problems with alcohol or gambling addiction needs professional help at best, but not a state that regulates how one spends their money like a strict boarding school director.
The current debate is not only unnecessary, but also dangerous: Anyone who even thinks out loud about restricting what asylum seekers spend their money on is assuming that they are making a nice life for themselves at the expense of the state. Is there anecdotal evidence for this? Perhaps. But nothing more. Rather, this way of thinking serves dangerous stereotypes about refugees and fuels further resentment in an already heated debate. The fact that many newcomers would like to work or complete training, but are often not allowed to do so, is completely ignored.
It is also naive to believe that such measures will prevent anyone from fleeing political persecution or “just” abject poverty. One could say somewhat sarcastically: If that were the case, then the previously long queues at social welfare offices should have had a sufficient deterrent effect.