Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Immigrants and their German-born children find themselves cut off from state benefits.
Jan 6, 2000 | Ayse Barzani was a 25-year-old mother of two when she got the unexpected news that she was pregnant again.
The young Kurdish refugee, who asked that her real name not be used, was scared. Her husband's salary barely covered the costs of raising two children; she didn't know how they could afford a third.
In the United States, Barzani would have had few options besides welfare. But in Germany, at least theoretically, the government provides -- financially -- for growing families.
"Everything that you don't have in America is everything that we do have in Germany," says Guenter Kolb, spokesman for the social benefits office in Baden-Wurttemburg, the southern German state where Barzani lives.
But the magnanimity of the state has its limits; and Barzani, an immigrant with refugee status, learned that she is not the intended beneficiary of the "everything" that Kolb proudly mentions. Most importantly, she is excluded from a stipend that non-immigrants with virtually the same financial profile receive to help them stay at home and raise young children.
Back in 1986, the German government began offering federal subsidies designed to encourage parents to have more children and to stay at home with them, at least during their earliest years. The country's plummeting birth rate -- and average of just 1.8 children per household -- inspired the creation of the stipend, which works on a sliding scale.
Under the guidelines, in a family where one parent works less than 19 hours a week and the annual household income is less than about $50,000, parents can receive about $315 a month for the first seven months of a child's life. After that, depending on the parents' income, families are eligible to receive anywhere from about $22 to about $315 a month, until the child is 24 months old.
Four German states extend the federal aid to offer parents with little income an extra year of financial aid. In Baden-Wurttemburg, the supplemental state subsidy is around $210 a month for parents whose monthly income is less than $1,300.
Barzani came to Baden-Wurttemburg in 1992 after fleeing southeastern Turkey with her husband and their two young children. They won political asylum but were not granted German citizenship. After her third child was born, Barzani began receiving federal benefits of about $315 a month. But when she applied for state child-rearing money, Baden-Wurttemburg officials turned her away. As a Turkish national, they argued, she did not qualify.
The family found that it could not make ends meet without the state money. Although they could have applied for welfare, Barzani did not want to have to depend on social assistance when she could support her family with money that is meant to be available to Germans.
In a lawsuit against the state, she argued that she and her husband, as legal residents who pay the same taxes as other Germans, are entitled to the same benefits. In August, she won the suit, but has yet to receive the approximately $2,520 she is owed retroactively. The benefits are being withheld as Baden-Wurttemburg's social welfare office tries to convince Germany's highest court to overturn the decision. A judgment is expected this month.
Whatever the federal administrative court decides, the ruling will apply to every state with programs that extend payment of child-rearing money. Millions of children growing up in Germany will be affected, but the greatest impact will be on the Turks. They make up the largest immigrant population in the country, and many do not have German citizenship.
"She was certainly not aware of the impact she would have," says Barzani's lawyer, Juergen Blechengar. "For her, the motivations were personal. She was concerned with how she could support her family without going on welfare. It was a matter of pride.
"She just wanted the same benefits that others get here."
Get Salon in your mailbox!