Initial orientation courses offer refugees the opportunity to use the waiting time for the asylum decision in a meaningful way: German language, values or traffic rules are on the course schedule. But the funding is shaky.
20 asylum seekers from South Sudan, Afghanistan or Syria are sitting in front of their A4 sheets of paper. You note what types of marital status there are in Germany and repeat the individual terms: single, single parent, widowed, divorced. “Married: This is man and woman, but it can also be two women or two men married,” Phimchanok Macleod, the course leader, explains to the class.
Whoever sits in front of her, highly concentrated, is to a certain extent the model student of the initial reception center for asylum seekers in the Palatinate town of Kusel. Because they all take part in the so-called initial orientation course voluntarily. It lasts 300 hours and includes six modules such as “Traffic and Mobility”, “Kindergarten and School” and “Values and Living Together”.
aha moments
What sounds simple means that people from other cultures and distant countries have a lot to learn: “Here in Germany, doctors make appointments, you don’t just sit in the waiting room; the cycle path is taboo for pedestrians, even if it runs along the top of the sidewalk, which is why the bell rang the cyclists are constantly angry,” says Christoph Emminghaus, describing various aha moments that participants experienced in the courses after they had wondered about their own experiences in Germany.
On behalf of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), Emminghaus has scientifically evaluated the purpose and benefits of the initial orientation courses: “If you expect people to come to us, if you want to learn from the mistakes of labor migration in the 1970s, that people don’t live unintegrated in Germany – then initial orientation courses are the opposite of that. They are integration from day one and people get on.”
Lots of material: course instructor Phimchanok Macleod at work.
difference to integration courses
The initial orientation courses should not be confused with the more commonly known integration courses. These are mandatory for new immigrants if they cannot communicate in German in a simple or sufficient way. They are much more extensive, with a progressive curriculum and take place in the municipality to which the asylum seeker has been assigned.
Initial orientation courses, on the other hand, are a voluntary offer, mostly in a reception facility – and also for asylum seekers who cannot expect any prospects of staying in Germany or who are currently not being deported because of deportation stops in unsafe countries of origin such as Syria or Afghanistan.
In addition to imparting language and customs, the initial orientation course also serves to learn. “Here we teach the basics: vocabulary and how you structure your learning. We give them a craft, so to speak,” explains course instructor Phimchanok Macleod, who is kind of on the spot with her teaching content: Her school class changes every week, participants move to get into the municipalities and their places, who start from scratch. The teacher will never see the fruits of her labor. Final exams are not planned in initial orientation courses.
uncertain funding
But what Macleod added more: It is uncertain whether she can continue to hold her courses. Because the federal government doubled the funds for orientation courses last year to 45 million euros due to the Ukraine war. But this year only 25 million flow. A return to the actual planning, is the reason given by the Federal Ministry of the Interior. More money is now flowing into integration courses than before, also because a new “opportunity right of residence” allows asylum seekers to complete an integration course directly during their asylum procedure, regardless of their prospects of staying.
Emminghaus thinks this decision is absolutely right – if only the integration courses stood alone and the number of asylum applications did not increase again overall: “When the initial orientation courses were launched in 2017, the idea was: We need an integration chain. The integration course is a great achievement. But the analysis was always: He is very demanding,” explains Emminghaus. For those who may never have attended school as a child, 600 or 900 hours of instruction in an integration course in a foreign language and in a foreign world is a challenge. In addition, many refugees still have to process their flight experience, as Emminghaus describes.
“Here we teach the basics,” says course instructor Macleod.
Well qualified Ukrainians
The Federal Ministry of the Interior cites another reason for its resource planning: “Studies clearly show that refugees from Ukraine, for example, belong to the group of immigrants with the best qualifications. 72 percent of refugees from Ukraine have a tertiary education qualification,” says one speaker with. The proportion of those who only have a primary school education or no educational qualifications at all is extremely low. Learning to learn in the initial orientation course: therefore superfluous for Ukrainians.
The Ministry therefore speaks of “needs-based planning”. It just doesn’t add up with numbers: the adult education centers offer 45 percent of the courses across Germany, making them the largest organizer of the courses. They count on: applications for around 1200 courses were reported, only 250 can be realized. Waiting time until the course starts: currently 15 weeks. Currently, tens of thousands of people remain in initial reception centers or in the waiting phase for an integration course with no educational offer. Lost time.
The sponsors of the courses unanimously say that the system is already at its limit, that the acquisition of rooms and teachers has been exhausted, and that the administrative and planning staff are overburdened. In order to be able to cope with the interest of the asylum seekers who are enthusiastic about learning, more staff must be hired and administrative requirements reduced. “The need is simply higher than 25 million euros,” agrees Emminghaus. “In terms of rapid integration, it would make sense that there was more money so that more people could attend initial orientation courses and quickly enter the integration process.”
Integration Minister want more federal money
The integration ministers of the federal states also see it this way and at their conference in Wiesbaden they approved an application for more money from the federal government for initial orientation courses. Conference chairman Kai Klose (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) from Hesse repeatedly said that “a valuable instrument would be lost” without the courses.
Not only valuable for the students, but also for those who pay for their courses – the taxpayer: “Of course, no participant comes directly to the job market. But these people are committed and have potential,” says Klose. “We have a six-figure number of people who retire every year. We won’t be able to absorb that without properly controlled immigration. And the initial orientation courses also make an important contribution here.”
It could become clear at the so-called refugee summit on May 10 whether the countries’ application will be successful. In view of the increasing number of asylum applications, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) invited the heads of government of the federal states.