Around 700 trainees at the vocational school in Berlin-Weißensee come from Vietnam on training visas. Trainees are recruited by private agencies and placed in Germany. Dehoga Berlin criticises the lack of quality control and calls for a monitoring system. Migration expert speaks of a ‘shady’ and ‘opaque’ market.
At the Brillat-Savarin School, many Vietnamese students are no longer attending vocational school classes. Around a third seem to have simply disappeared. ‘No one knows where they've gone,’ says Sebastian Riesner. He is a member of the school conference as a representative of the Food, Beverages and Catering Union (NGG). ‘In the best case scenario,’ says Riesner, the young people end up ‘in some nail salon, in the worst case in prostitution, where they pay off their debts.’
With around 5,000 students, the vocational school in Berlin-Weißensee is one of the largest training centres for the hospitality industry in Germany. Around 700 trainees now come from Vietnam. It is striking that the majority of them speak very little German, even though they have obtained B1 language certificates in Vietnam. Alongside the training contract, such a certificate is one of the key requirements for a visa.
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