Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,
A new report by Austria’s Public Employment Service (AMS) has sparked controversy after suggesting that some refugees are intentionally failing German language courses to avoid being placed in low-paying jobs.
The findings, published in the study “New Refugees from Syria on the Austrian Labor Market,” highlight a growing challenge for integration policy, with concerns that language training, once seen as the key to employment, is becoming a barrier instead.
In the report, one first-hand account from a Syrian woman who studied medicine in her home country and worked as a paediatrician in Turkey, criticized what she sees as a systemic problem: qualified Syrian women being pushed into cleaning jobs without any consideration of their professional skills. She claims that, in response, some refugees purposely fail their language exams to avoid being forced into such low-status work.
Central to her complaint is the issue of inadequate wages, which she says often do not even cover basic living expenses, making social benefits a more attractive option.
The case study appears to be supported by AMS data, which showed that two-thirds of those granted asylum or subsidiary protection require literacy training, and 44 percent are completely illiterate. As reported by Kosmo, the AMS notes that 30 percent of refugees still have no German-language knowledge even 18 months after registering in Austria. Many spent years in transit countries before arriving, and in some cases, they cannot even read in their native language.
In July 2025, the unemployment rate for Syrians in Austria stood at 45.4 percent. Vienna is the epicenter of the problem, with more than half of all unemployed migrants living in the capital. Meanwhile, in other federal states, tens of thousands of low-skilled jobs remain unfilled.
The AMS acknowledges that deliberately failing courses to avoid work may occur, but insists this is not a widespread practice. “There are probably isolated cases, but this does not exist as a perceptible phenomenon,” the agency says. However, it concedes that proving deliberate failure is “hardly feasible in practice.” Sanctions are only possible if it can be clearly demonstrated that a person intentionally sabotaged their course or exam.
The issue is also closely linked to Austria’s welfare system. Some migrants may calculate that low-skilled work pays less than the combined value of unemployment benefits and minimum income support. The AMS does not deny that the financial incentive to remain unemployed exists.
The Austrian federal government is attempting to reform the system to ensure that work pays more than benefits. Starting in 2026, asylum seekers who skip compulsory language courses or fail the final exam will face cuts to their social welfare payments.
In Lower and Upper Austria, such measures are already in place, with reductions of up to 50 percent for those who refuse to participate.
Earlier this week, the reality of mass immigration in Austria was laid bare after new figures from the Statistical Yearbook on Migration and Integration found that women from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq living in Austria have an average birth rate almost three times higher than that of Austrian-born women.
The new generation with a growing Muslim population is having a profound effect in Austria, particularly in education.
In October 2024, federal data revealed that more than three-quarters of students in Vienna’s middle schools do not speak German at home, putting pressure on an education system designed for single-language learning.
A survey at the same time by the local teachers’ union at some of Vienna’s 100 compulsory schools revealed not only systematic issues like language barriers, but also extreme incidents, including assaults on teachers, situations where parents of schoolchildren asked a teacher to wear a burqa, and even the presence of mock executions.
It has led to teachers leaving their profession — 20 a day on average in 2024 — and other educators speaking out on the “rapid Islamization” of the Austrian capital.
“Islam is changing our society in ways we do not want,” said longtime principal of a Vienna middle school, Christian Klar, in an interview with Christian magazine Corrigenda last year.
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