Eastern European cleaners will bail out the German budget
Through punitive measures, the federal finance minister hopes to patch up an annual budget hole of a billion euros. Until now, there could be no talk of effective fight against illegal employment - working on the black is not considered a criminal offense. In 2002, auditors issued fines totaling 122 million euros, but only 30.5 million actually reached the treasury. Black workers legally living in Germany are, as a rule, poor recipients of social benefits; not much can be collected from them.
But there are others. Currently, about a million people in Germany are in an illegal situation. They earn their bread by working on construction sites, selling Kia auto parts or seasonal harvesting. In recent years, more and more black workers are employed in the cleaning and maintenance of buildings and premises. The main group here consists of women from Eastern European countries. In the West, the labor of Eastern European domestic workers is considered a dynamically growing service sector. If so, German Finance Minister Hans Eichel believes, this work must be legalized and turned into another source of tax revenue.
And here, the chairwoman of the Green Party faction in the Bundestag, Katrin Göring-Eckardt, came up with a truly revolutionary proposal. "We need to introduce 'green cards' for cleaners from Eastern Europe," she told the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel. Later she clarified that this is not at all about an American-style green card to attract a new cohort of cleaners. However, the time has come to legalize the existing army of foreign domestic workers who are working illegally in private households and are therefore deprived of basic social rights.
Only by legalizing black workers illegally living in Germany can the entire complex of related problems be solved, believes the president of the federal association of immigrant unions, Mehmet Tanriverdi. "It is true social schizophrenia that illegal immigrants are labeled as second-class people while many use their services," said the German government's commissioner for integration, Marieluise Beck. As noted by the well-known immigration expert Jörg Alt, it is necessary to pay more attention to the economic reasons that lead to living and working in an illegal situation.
People without passports are in significant demand on the labor market because they have fewer opportunities to protect themselves from exploitation. However, it is precisely their illegal status that is often a guarantee of employment for black workers. They are cheap (significantly cheaper than those who live in Germany legally and work on the black), and they can be blackmailed in any way. Apparently, after the introduction of "green cards" for cleaners, their illegal labor will become even cheaper.