Linke on migration and integration

The Left wants to bring conditions for all refugees closer to those applied to people from Ukraine. This includes easy access to housing, work, education, and health care, and generous use of legal leeway on residence status.

Refugees from Ukraine got help quickly. The Left wants this for all refugees. They should easily get housing, work, and schooling. They should also be able to see a doctor. The authorities should let as many as possible stay.

The plan calls for unbureaucratic access to housing, work, education, and health care. Refugees are to be housed in decentralized reception facilities. Legal leeway for tolerated-stay permits and residence titles is to be used to the full. The party links this to the goal of making Bremen and Bremerhaven cities of solidarity that stand for openness.

Districts such as Gröpelingen or Blumenthal, where many immigrants and refugees first settle, are to receive preferential support. At the same time, other districts are to take on a larger share of integration.

Many new people arrive in certain districts. They find their first home there. The Left wants to give these districts extra help. Other districts should also take in new people.

The preferential treatment is to apply to urban development, housing oversight, and security policy, as well as to funding for housing, culture, and small businesses and to resources for schools and daycare centers. The program notes that people in these neighborhoods move often, which makes social neighborhood work harder. In its view, integration only works when the social mix stays balanced. The Left wants to push for matching district strategies.

The Left wants to ease the recognition of qualifications obtained abroad and expand related counseling. According to the program, many people in Bremen cannot work in their trained profession because their qualification is not recognized.

Many people learned their job in another country. In Germany their qualification often does not count. The Left wants to make this easier. There should be more advice. Courses for missing skills should also continue.

According to the program, this affects people who often worked in their profession for many years. Besides simpler procedures and more counseling, training for the most commonly missing additional skills is to continue. The measure is among the projects to be carried out through the state agency for vocational continuing education.

The Left wants to remove barriers and disadvantages for people with a migration background in the labor market and promote their potential in a targeted way. Counseling centers for mobile EU workers and against workplace discrimination are to be permanently funded.

People with a migration background often have a harder time at work. The Left wants to change that. There should be more language mediators. These are people who help others understand. Advice centers against exploitation should get permanent funding.

Language support is to be planned into all funding programs from the start, and the number of language mediators is to rise. Support is to go, for example, to startups, networks, and educational resources of people with a migration background. The MoBA counseling center for mobile workers and victims of labor exploitation and the anti-discrimination office ADA are to be made permanent. According to the program, workers who live in other EU countries find it especially hard to enforce their rights and pay.

The Left calls for permanent residence status for people persecuted because of their gender or sexual orientation. Refugee women who have experienced violence should also get an unrestricted right to stay and dedicated shelters.

Some people flee because they are queer. Queer means, for example, lesbian, gay or trans. The Left wants them to be allowed to stay for good. The same should apply to refugee women who suffered violence. They should get safe housing.

Queer refugees should receive safe, separate housing and be free to choose where they live. For refugee women who have experienced violence, the platform provides for suitable shelters as well as medical and psychological care. Staff at the Jobcenter and the Office for Social Services should be trained in dealing with people affected by violence. Public authorities should have contact persons trained to work with queer migrants.

The Left wants to reduce disadvantages for people with a migration background in daycare, school, training and work. Victims of labor exploitation are to receive a humanitarian right to stay.

Immigrants often have worse chances at school and at work. The Left wants to change that. Job applications should more often be checked without names. People who were exploited at work should be allowed to stay in Germany.

Daycare places are to be expanded in a socially fair way, and registration is to be possible in other languages too. Multilingualism is to be treated as a skill, and there are to be more educators and teachers with migration experience. Anonymous application procedures are to be extended among public and private employers. Advice centers and employer inspections are to prevent exploitation. Foreign qualifications are to be recognized more often, working with chambers and professional associations. Job centers and language schools are to cooperate more closely to offer suitable language courses.

The Left wants legal escape routes and a Bremen state admission program for people at risk in Afghanistan. Refugees from Ukraine without a Ukrainian passport should be treated the same as those with one.

The Left wants safe and legal ways for people to flee. Bremen should take in people from Afghanistan who are in danger. This includes relatives of people living in Bremen. People fleeing Ukraine should have the same rights, whatever passport they hold.

The program is to cover local staff, people active in civil society and relatives of Bremen residents. Bremen should keep pushing the program for Afghan family members already adopted by the Senate; income should play no role in admitting relatives. For refugees from Ukraine without a Ukrainian passport, interim tools at state level such as provisional residence certificates (Fiktionsbescheinigungen) are to be used. The party sees the fast, low-bureaucracy reception of people from Ukraine as the minimum standard for everyone fleeing.

The Left rejects classifying countries as safe countries of origin and points to Roma, who rarely receive protection. It wants political asylum for whistleblowers and a humanitarian right to stay for victims of violence and exploitation.

Germany treats some countries as safe. People from those countries almost never get protection. The Left is against this rule. People who expose wrongdoing should get asylum. Victims of violence and exploitation should be allowed to stay.

Safe countries of origin are states where asylum law presumes there is no persecution. The platform criticizes that Roma almost never receive protection status despite exclusion and persecution. Victims of forced prostitution, far-right violence and labor exploitation should be able to use a humanitarian right to stay to free themselves from dependency. The party rejects Europe sealing itself off and selecting refugees by economic usefulness.

The Left wants refugees housed in small, decentralized units instead of large shared shelters, and moved into their own apartments early. Bremen itself should build and convert properties for this, for example through a public agency.

The Left does not want big shelters for refugees. They should live in small housing units all across the city. They should get their own apartment as soon as possible. Bremen should build and convert buildings itself for this.

The early move into their own housing is to apply to all refugees regardless of residence status. Agreements with housing companies such as GEWOBA are to be expanded to secure apartment quotas, and there should be more guaranteed-lease apartments. A new public-law agency or existing municipal companies should build and convert shelters, because renting on the private market is, in the party's view, expensive and inflexible. Where housing is misused and need is high, the platform also considers socialization. New buildings should have apartment layouts and be combined with daycare centers, social centers or dorms for trainees and students.

The Left rejects the central initial reception center on Lindenstraße in its current form because it considers it too large. It wants to keep shrinking the facility and spread it across several sites.

Bremen has one large first shelter for asylum seekers. The Left thinks it is too big. It wants to make it smaller and spread it over several places. People who are especially at risk should be housed safely from the start.

The platform notes that the occupancy cap has already been lowered from 750 to 500 people but considers this insufficient. In the party's view, independent asylum procedure counseling and violence-protection plans do not change the core problem of size. An early screening is to identify special protection needs so that vulnerable groups are housed safely from the outset.

The Left wants refugee shelters designed like apartments, with privacy, private bathrooms and kitchens. The inviolability of the home should apply there too, and every shared shelter should have a violence-protection plan.

Shelters for refugees should be like apartments. There should be a private bathroom and a kitchen. No one may simply enter the rooms, not even the police. Every shelter needs a plan to protect people from violence. There should be more staff and interpreters.

The platform treats dorms after initial reception only as a stopgap when regular housing is lacking. Protection of the home should also apply toward caretakers, security staff, authorities and police, and be secured through house rules, for example. Better staffing ratios and funded language mediators and interpreters are meant to ease the situation. Refugee women and young queer refugees should have dedicated services. The party wants to review the independent complaints office and expand it if needed; residents' participation in dorms is to be funded.

The Left wants more money and staff for counseling, guide programs, German learning sites and translation help for refugees. Government tasks should not be permanently shifted onto volunteers.

Refugees need advice and help when they arrive. The Left wants more money and more staff for this. The state should not leave this work to volunteers. Young refugees should be able to finish school even as adults.

Budgets for guide and mentoring programs, places to learn German and translation help are to grow and become easier to access. Counseling for young refugees is to be funded permanently, along with more tutoring inside and outside school. After turning 18, it should remain possible to complete school diplomas. Projects that people with refugee experience run for other refugees should keep receiving funding with easy access.

The Left wants people without German or other EU citizenship to be able to vote for the district councils as well. The condition would be five years of residence in Germany and currently living in Bremen.

Some people in Bremen have no German or EU passport. Today they cannot vote for the district councils. The Left wants to change that. People who have lived in Germany for five years and live in Bremen should be able to vote.

The program argues that many of these people have lived in the neighborhoods for years and are integrated there. So far, it says, they are shut out of political decisions in their district. The voting right would apply to the Beiräte, the elected councils of the city districts.