Illegal reality
The life of every sixth elderly Austrian is in the hands of an aging Slovak woman. She is nearly sixty, speaks German with difficulty, has no special education and no permanent source of income. She came to Austria as a tourist and works here illegally. For €600 a month, plus food and lodging, she is willing to work as a caregiver, as well as a cook and cleaner. Her shift lasts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for three weeks straight. After three weeks, she goes home, and a replacement comes in. She is also Slovak, also a little under sixty, also speaks German poorly.
According to official data alone, foreigners make up 11.6% of Austria's workforce and 9.8% of the country's population. According to experts, to get an objective picture that also reflects the presence of illegal migrants, these figures should be multiplied by at least one and a half. Of all sectors of the Austrian economy, the sector most dependent on illegal labor is care services for the sick and elderly. According to estimates by the Austrian Institute of Economic Research WiFo, the volume of the illegal share of this market ranges from €480 to ?520 million per year, and the total number of illegal caregivers working in Austria is about 40,000 people. In fact, this means that every fifth Austrian family with elderly relatives is involved in illegal business. Most often, this is not even kept secret: the neighbors, the attending physician, and even representatives of the insurance company paying for the pensioner's treatment know about the "guest from Slovakia" living with the family.
Everyone participates
The massive use of illegal migrant labor in caring for elderly family members has long become commonplace in Austria and is not considered shameful. Even now, ahead of parliamentary elections, leading politicians from various parties are one after another admitting to their involvement in hiring illegal migrants, which does not affect their parties' ratings. Just in the past week, Austrians learned that Slovaks working illegally in Austria cared for the late father of the country's Federal President Heinz Fischer (and the president's sister proudly stated that she was extremely satisfied with the caregiver's work), as well as for the mother-in-law of Federal Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel. Shortly after these admissions, the fact of using illegal migrant labor was confirmed by two former interior ministers: socialist Helmut Kukacka and conservative Caspar Einem.
"The ease with which politicians admit to hiring illegal migrants to care for their relatives shows only one thing: society has already accepted that in some sectors of the economy, the massive use of cheap illegal guest workers is inevitable. In particular, this is the only way to organize care for the elderly," Gudrun Biffl, a specialist at the Austrian Institute of Economic Research WiFo, tells Expert. "Today, every Austrian is somehow dependent on the work of illegal caregivers. An unpretentious and hardworking Slovak woman takes care of his mother or father, father-in-law, aunt, friend's father, and so on. Austrian society, which traditionally has strong right-wing radical tendencies, has effectively recognized illegal caregivers as 'useful illegals,' so politicians take almost no risk in admitting to using their labor. Even the radical 'Alliance for the Future of Austria,' led by Jörg Haider, does not demand their deportation."
Pure economics
Despite the traditionally very harsh political rhetoric of most parties towards foreigners, even those legally in the country, Slovak caregivers have become virtually the only group of illegals that is openly sympathized with by almost all segments of society. The reason is the massive demand for services of illegal caregivers. For the normal functioning of the Austrian elderly care system, it requires a huge number of low-skilled caregivers, who provide not so much medical services as help with household chores. In a country with a population of eight million, there are 550,000 elderly or sick citizens in need of constant care. There are two options for solving the problem – either a nursing home or a live-in caregiver, and more than half of them choose the caregiver option.
"Unlike Great Britain or Scandinavia, where elderly care is mainly provided through the system of municipal hospitals or nursing homes, in Austria the focus was initially on personal caregivers. Of course, not every pensioner can afford to hire a caregiver, so the state and insurance companies compensate a significant part of these costs. Depending on health condition and income level, an elderly Austrian can expect a monthly subsidy ranging from €150 to €1.500. The most important thing is that the amount of subsidies allocated to elderly citizens does not depend on the actual cost of the caregiver services hired by the family. These expenses are not controlled by anyone: in principle, one can not hire a caregiver at all and take care of the relative oneself, which many Austrians did before. Today, when the opportunity to hire a cheap illegal migrant from Eastern Europe has emerged, many Austrians are quick to take advantage of it. The state also benefits from this and does not increase the amount of subsidies. As a result, everyone is satisfied. It is safe to say that if tens of thousands of Slovak women were not working in the country, the existing system would collapse overnight," explains Gudrun Biffl.
The total amount of subsidies for caregivers received by Austrian pensioners from federal and local budgets last year amounted to almost €1.7 billion, while budget expenditures on nursing homes were limited to only €1.1 billion. In a situation where the prices for legal and illegal caregivers differ approximately tenfold (if the services of the former cost around €6,000 per month for round-the-clock care, then a caregiver from Slovakia can be found, as already mentioned, for just €600), and the number of retirement-age citizens is constantly growing, officials are simply forced to turn a blind eye to the current situation. Otherwise, they would have to either go for a catastrophic increase in subsidy spending, which is impossible in itself, or face mass protests from citizens who no longer have the opportunity to hire caregivers for their relatives.
See no evil, hear no evil
The hopelessness of the current situation is well understood by companies involved in placing illegal migrants in the elderly care sector. They do not hide their activities at all. For example, the largest of these firms, with the pathetic name 'Austrian Union of St. Elizabeth for the Care of the Elderly and Sick,' posted on its website in the 'Press about us' section several articles from leading Austrian newspapers that describe the company's illegal business in detail. Other firms are also not particularly shy, praising on their websites 'unpretentious caregivers from Slovakia.' They indeed have nothing to fear – in recent years, responsibility for bringing in illegal migrants for elder care, by a strange coincidence, has been borne by only one person: a resident of the federal state of Lower Austria was sentenced by a court to a fine of €2,200.
'The main problem is that such firms have learned to skillfully circumvent the law,' explains Gudrun Biffl. 'Formally, all these companies are non-profit mutual aid associations. This form of organization has historically been very popular in Austria. For example, residents of a village can create a mutual aid union whose members undertake to help each other with house building. Such organizations receive tax and other benefits. Firms providing caregiver services also offer pensioners to become members of a mutual aid union by paying a certain membership fee. After that, another member of the union, a Slovak caregiver, begins to provide services to the pensioner. Formally, this happens on a voluntary and gratuitous basis; the contract only defines the client's obligation to feed the caregiver and provide housing, and all the money she receives for her services is considered pocket money, the amount of which is not even specified in the contract. In fact, such firms have found a gray area in the legislation and actively use it.'
The police for foreign affairs, specially created to control illegal migrants, is also powerless to do anything. 'Of course, we can check the documents of a suspicious citizen,' explained the head of the Vienna Department of Police for Foreign Affairs, Stefan Stadetzky. 'However, after Slovakia's accession to the EU, any of its citizens has the full right to be legally on Austrian territory. A violation arises only when a citizen of Slovakia or another country starts working in Austria without the appropriate permission. But in the case of caregivers, it is almost impossible to prove the fact of work. We are quite successful in solving the problem of illegal migrants on construction sites, in stores, and in other fields, but we cannot do anything about illegal caregivers.'
No retreat
Meanwhile, most politicians and citizens of the country fully understand that the current situation cannot go on forever. Gudrun Biffl believes that the only way out could be full legalization of migrant women. Most politicians hold the same point of view, although the models they propose differ in degree of radicalism. For example, while Austrian Minister of Economy Martin Bartenstein is convinced that to solve the problem, it is necessary to lower the minimum wage at which a foreigner is granted a work permit from €1,500 to €1,200, opposition politicians, such as the leader of the Green Party Alexander Van der Bellen, demand to lower the bar to €600, because that is how much a Slovak caregiver earns on average and that is how all migrant women can be legalized.
However, the problem is clearly not solvable by merely lowering the minimum wage level that satisfies migration officials. The activities of illegal caregivers violate at least a dozen other Austrian laws prohibiting 24-hour shifts, work without social insurance, work in patient care without special medical education, and so on. For this reason alone, it is simply impossible to talk about a full-fledged legalization of the caregiver services market without a radical revision of the entire labor legislation.
Finally, even if the problem is solved, the solution will be temporary. According to sociologists' forecasts, by 2020 the number of Austrians aged over 75 will reach 970,000, and the number of those needing helpers will increase from today's 550,000 to 900,000. The cost of creating just one legal workplace in the field of providing care for the elderly is €80,000–100,000. If the current system of elderly care, which is based on the work of individual caregivers, is maintained, the total expenditure would be at least €20 billion – an amount unaffordable for the Austrian economy.
Sergei Sumlenny.
Expert