"If legal changes have to be made, they have to be made", minister Léon Gloden told RTL in an interview on Friday. A number of administrations are involved in the procedure for a residence permit for "guest workers" from third countries. They include the National Employment Agency (ADEM), which must certify that a advertised position could not be filled by a job applicant from within the EU, and the Ministry of Education, which converts diplomas.
Gloden said it was also worth considering the distribution of the tasks between the different ministries. Currently the Immigration Office makes the decision on whether it is in the economic interest for a person to occupy a role.
"Are we really the right office to decide on economic interest? Should that be a task for ADEM instead? Are we the right office to check language certificates? These are all talking points we need to discuss with our colleagues in other ministries", Gloden explained.
He demonstratively supported his colleagues in the Immigration Office. "Sometimes you get the impression there is a general suspicion about everyone, but we are talking about such a small number of officers, and we have nearly 200 employees here. And the number of cases is relatively small."
In total, 239 cases are being investigated, corresponding to roughly 0.7% of the cases handled by the department.
Gloden was speaking to RTL on Friday afternoon to discuss the results of the audit he commissioned to look into the Immigration Office.
It emerged that the workload had grown in the department, but the staffing level had not kept pace. Gloden has already announced a solution: "The staff will be strengthened in the short term. We will take people from different departments into this department, and we will create three additional positions and another position for digitalisation."
Digitalisation should also be urgently pushed forward. Currently the processes are not fully computerised, making it difficult to track when staff log in and where. The audit also noted that the paper archive was easily accessible to everyone, allowing any employee to access a file regardless of whether they worked on it or not.
Gloden explained: "This will be changed in the short term, we'll amend the access rights to the files so people can only access cases for which they are responsible. A clear procedure will be created between people analysing the file and those who later make the decision."
The auditors also found that while there are clear procedures, they are not implemented uniformly. New guidelines have been issued to officials, for example to standardize how officials assess whether or not economic interest has been demonstrated in a given case.
