As of: February 28, 2024, 6:00 p.m
By: Amy Walker
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Press
Split
The decision to pay citizens' money directly to refugees from Ukraine is being increasingly questioned.
At the same time, suspected cases of social fraud by fake Ukrainians are increasing.
Berlin – Was it a mistake to give the refugees from Ukraine a different status than all other refugees?
This is a question that politicians are increasingly asking themselves.
Only recently, CDU leader Friedrich Merz commented on this and said: “It was probably a mistake that we decided two years ago [...] that the Ukrainian refugees would also go into the citizen's allowance almost immediately and not initially for one receive asylum seeker benefits for a certain period of time”.
He justified this with the labor market figures, which show that Ukrainian refugees are less likely to find work in Germany than elsewhere.
Over 5000 cases of social fraud by fake Ukrainians
The debate is now gaining new momentum as reports of welfare fraud by non-Ukrainians are increasing.
A few weeks ago, the Schwäbische Zeitung
reported
a total of more than 1,300 suspected cases of people who falsely pretended to be Ukrainians in order to receive citizen's benefit.
Hungarian citizenship has now been established for 58 people.
These figures come from the authorities in the southwest.
Now the Berliner Zeitung
reports
that at least 5,609 suspected cases of social fraud have now been reported to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) throughout Germany.
There are a total of 2,846 cases from Bavaria, 1,980 cases from Baden-Württemberg, 697 cases from Thuringia, 81 cases from Lower Saxony, four cases from Hesse and one from Saxony-Anhalt, the medium reports.
A banner in the background at Laatzen train station reads “Welcome to Hanover” in Ukrainian.
© Michael Matthey/dpa
According to Swabian, the cases in the southwest were mostly Hungarians and Romanians from the border region of Transcarpathia, who only have Ukrainian citizenship and do not speak Ukrainian.
However, they are not entitled to the citizen's allowance privilege for Ukrainians.
33 million euros transferred to fake Ukrainians?
It remains to be seen whether all of these cases will ultimately be confirmed.
But if you assume these numbers and that these people all received at least the standard benefit of 502 euros per month in 2023, then at least 33 million euros were transferred to these people last year.
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According to the Federal Employment Agency, a total of 700,000 Ukrainians in Germany are currently receiving citizen's benefit.
Of these, around 154,000 have been sent to the integration course since January 2023.
In a general integration course there are six language course sections and an orientation part, totaling 700 teaching hours.
After the cases in Baden-Württemberg became known, Baden-Württemberg's Justice State Secretary Siegfried Lorek (CDU) demanded that the Ukrainian authorities "work carefully when issuing documents and rule out misuse."
He also believes that an end to direct access to citizens' money makes sense.