The local Hessen state government had a open session yesterday here in Wiesbaden....with various parties establishing some 'line-in-the-sand' over refugees and immigration within Hessen.
It's pretty well established now with a policy by the German government that if you are coming here from Albania or Kosovo....your immigration opportunity has gone from 'very-strong' to 'almost-impossible'. The Germans have reshuffled the deck and said that war victims (like Iraq or Syria for example) rate higher. What they say in public is that if you show up and try to get any status or work-permit.....you will be put through a very quick process, and most-likely sent back to Albania or Kosovo. We aren't talking about months of waiting anymore....nor even weeks....but simply a couple of days, and you get a free bus-ticket back home and a box-lunch.
The Greens talk from yesterday? Well....they want more funding for medical care for the asylum seekers and new immigrants. They also want more emphasis on integration and language programs. Behind all of this....was a brief discussion by the Greens on jobs, and job-training.
Overall, at least by my general impression, the difficult story for anyone to tell is how all these incoming refugees and new immigrants will fit into the current job atmosphere. You measure up a guy who might be a trained mechanic from Damascus....how do you rate this guy or find him a new within Wiesbaden....without any certifications that local employers expect? You take a gal who was an accountant in Iraq....how can you move her into some on-the-job training situation with company X and get her some real status within two years? This type of 'bridge' environment simply doesn't exist.
The other side of this problem is that you might have a family show up from Syria with two kids...fifteen and seventeen years old. The state government of Hessen is only obligated to provide education to kids eighteen and below. You figure that a kid needs almost a full year of language training before he can be dumped into the German school system, and there's a question already of comparison. Well....the seventeen year old kid will be out of education options by the time he finishes language classes. The younger kid might still have two years left but upon evaluation....he'd almost have to start at the 7th grade level to fit better in the educational environment.
Behind all of this chatter at the Hessen regional situation.....there's talk of forty-thousand more refugees showing up in 2015....on top of the ones already here.
Just talking about the shelters or homes isn't enough anymore.....the next hot topic of integration, jobs and language training has now moved up a notch and the political folks realize the Euro connection to each topic and how someone will have to pay for all this open-door policy. Millions? I'd take a guess that for each single four-person family in the system.....you can figure with housing, food, medical, transportation, integration classes, language classes, and 'support'.....it could be roughly 40,000 Euro (my humble guess) a year spent on the family unit of four. That's a fair amount of money, and while it might only be required for roughly eighteen months.....you have to wonder where the funding comes from.
The odds of peace coming to Syria or Iraq and the family returning? I would speculate that it won't happen in the next decade. These folks are permanently here, as far as I can see the issue. The shock of taxation and cost of living? I could write a 300-line essay over that topic (from an American prospective). I'm pretty sure that around day twenty after some refugee family arrives in Germany....there's a evening-long chat over how expensive things are and members of the family wondering how Germans can afford to make it in this environment. Skeptic views become a daily topic of discussion.
On the positive side....at least the political players are openly discussing the matter. I admit....they are a year or two behind things.....but there's always ample opportunity to catch up.
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