STEFAN from a country outside the EU, 33: The professional waiter has worked for many years as a regular seasonal worker in the hospitality trade. He would very much like to settle permanently in Austria and be able to lead a normal life with his family. Up to now all of his applications have been declined.
I would never have thought that I would ever be so dispirited. I’ve always been confident that you can overcome all obstacles if you enjoy working and you have a positive attitude to life and behave impeccably. But now I’m slowly realizing that I don’t know much anymore.
In my native country I trained as a waiter after I’d left school and completed this training with a diploma. In Austria the labour market in the hospitality industry is not covered by local people. That’s what led to me getting my very first job in Austria. To start with I worked the summer season in Carinthia and the winter season in the Tirol. For many years I’ve been in Carinthia the whole year, always with the same company, that wrote to the job centre and asked specifically for me. That’s good, because my status has been upgraded for a long time from seasonal worker to regular seasonal worker.
My main problem is that I’m not allowed to settle here. As a seasonal worker I’m allowed to work a six month maximum stint in Austria, then I have to go back to my home country for a month. Taking the year as a whole I’m allowed to work a maximum of ten months in Austria and have to take a break twice for a month outside the EU. It’s been like that for 15 years.
I got to know my wife in my home country. She’s also a seasonal worker, we’ve always worked for the same companies. A few years ago we fulfilled our greatest wish and after some hesitation started a family. Our child was born here in Austria and is insured with us here in Austria. But he’s only allowed to officially reside here with a tourist visa which is issued for three months. After that he’s supposed to stay at least three months in our home country.
Our child goes to nursery school here and doesn’t ask anyone about residence status thank God. But somehow in the background there’s the fear that it could be investigated and our child would have to leave the country. For our child Austria is his home country, he’s growing up here, is learning how to live in this culture. In a few years he’ll be at school. Will he be able to go to school here? How will that work, if we have to leave the country for two months a year? And not in the long school holidays, because that’s the peak season for the hospitality industry.
Our lack of right of domicile has lots of repercussions on our daily life. One simple example is the mobile phone. Without a main residence I can’t set up a mobile phone contract, I can only use prepaid cards. Or somebody who lives here permanently can register his name for a mobile phone and I can make the monthly payments to this person. There are a lot more problems to do with registering a car. But those are just a few examples.
Another worry that bugs me increasingly: I’m still fairly young and healthy. In the two months of our compulsory break my family and I am not insured. But even in the time I am insured, what will happen if I get ill? A friend of mine who’s a seasonal worker like me got problems with his back. He had to be operated on several times. He had to stop working for his company because they needed a replacement, the company had to keep going. The medical insurance company only paid for a month after he stopped working, then it all stopped. The friend has to absorb any further costs. I don’t know how he’s doing that, he can’t work at the moment.
When I’m in the playground and I see other children and pregnant women, then I feel bitterness descend: my wife and I have worked here for 15 years and that means putting up with two and a half months in the peak season with no day off. We pay tax here and our status is so much worse than refugees’. My wife worked up to her final day and didn’t get any maternity leave after the birth. We don’t have any entitlement to family credit, our child lives half illegally with us here. We don’t have any right to settle, we can’t apply for citizenship or main residence.
When I speak to friends who left my native country after me and went to Italy or Germany or to other EU states, they all received unlimited residence permits long ago. And they say to me: that’s not right, you’ve been in Austria longer than in Italy or Germany. But what can I do? In Austria the laws are always being changed, but there are always stipulations which get in the way, that fundamentally change the legal situation for the better for seasonal workers like my family and me. I’d simply like to be able to live with my family like normal people. 10.12.2013