Applying for an employment permit when you are granted a residence permit
Source: BUS Rheinland-PfalzIf you are in an ongoing asylum procedure, employment is only permitted if this is expressly stated in your residence permit. If you want to work, you must therefore apply for an employment permit at the Foreigners' Registration Office. This also applies to the exercise of in-company vocational training or an internship.
If you have been allowed to stay in Germany for three months, are no longer obliged to live in an initial reception centre for asylum seekers (including a reception centre, arrival centre or anchor centre) and have already found an employer who would like to hire you, you may be allowed to work.
To process your application, the Foreigners' Registration Office usually involves the Federal Employment Agency, which checks the working conditions. After an uninterrupted stay in Germany for more than four years, the Federal Employment Agency no longer has to be involved.
If you would like to complete in-company vocational training (dual training), the employment permit for the specific training place must be applied for individually. School-based vocational training is subject to approval.
The employment permit is issued for a limited period of time for the duration of the approval of the Federal Employment Agency, at the latest until the residence permit expires.
There are the following limitations:
The exercise of gainful employment is generally prohibited as long as you are obliged to live in an initial reception centre. Only if your asylum procedure has not been completed within nine months can you be allowed to work.
If you are an asylum seeker from a so-called "safe country of origin", i.e. from a Member State of the European Union, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ghana, Kosovo, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (North Macedonia), Montenegro, Senegal or Serbia, and have submitted your asylum application after 31 August 2015, you will not be able to obtain an employment permit during the asylum procedure.
There is also no access to the German labour market for asylum seekers whose asylum procedure has been rejected as manifestly unfounded or inadmissible and for whose action no suspensive effect has been ordered.