Scheme to pay laid-off foreigners to leave sign of “panic”, says human rights lawyer
With unemployment rising fast in the Czech Republic, it is often guest workers from states like Vietnam and Mongolia who are the first to be laid off – with redundancy meaning they immediately lose their legal status. Now the government has come out with a new scheme to give 2,000 unemployed foreigners a one-way ticket home, and a 500-euro payment.
Interior Minister Ivan Langer told Czech Television the state had to do something about people who had no job, no money and no Czech language skills.
“Either you leave a foreigner like that alone or you offer help. That help in our case is a flight ticket and a motivational payment, because if we don’t look after them there’s a high probability they’ll commit a crime. The costs connected with them contravening their residence status and possibly committing a crime are many times higher than if we help them go home.”
I discussed the implications of the new scheme with lawyer Pavel Čižinský from Prague’s Counselling Centre for Citizenship, Civil and Human Rights.
“Normally if you are employed you have some termination period of two months and you get three times your monthly wage [if you are let go]. But these employees of labour agencies are mostly employed on a fixed term…and if the term is over then you must go.”
Do you think many foreigners will take up this offer from the government of a flight ticket home and a 500-euro payment or handout?
“I don’t think so. And I even think the Interior Ministry doesn’t think so. Because the planned volume is 2,000 foreigners, but in the Czech Republic there are hundreds of thousands of foreigners. So I think even the Ministry of the Interior thinks the vast majority will not want to leave for this…only to get a flight ticket paid and 500 euros.”
The interior minister was talking yesterday about the dangers of these foreigners ending up in crime – do you think that’s a serious possibility?
“I think it’s…panic. I don’t think foreigners are more likely to become criminals than any of us.”
But the minister was saying if you’re in a foreign country and you can’t speak the language, you haven’t got a job, you haven’t got money, what’s left to you but crime?
“But crime is a strong word. Of course there is a shadow economy, there is a black labour market. OK. But so many Czech people work illegally that the amount of foreigners working illegally is not that tragic. I wouldn’t call illegal work or an illegal stay a crime.”
Finally Pavel, what do you think of this government project, or government scheme?
“And now the atmosphere in society seems to be that everybody must go home because there’s a crisis. I think it’s necessary to loosen the legislative restrictions which are imposed on the life of foreigners.
“If the government wants to make some really good motivation for some of the Vietnamese or Mongolian workers who are really endangered by poverty or maybe even hunger, then the government should give them some possibility or even security that they will be able to return, after the crisis is over.
“But the government goes the opposite way. The government says, go home and we will make the visa in the future stricter. So the worker will know, if I go away I will not return for many years. And this is really counterproductive.”
