Apply for a work permit with a residence permit

If 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 have to apply for a work permit at the immigration office. This also applies to in-company vocational training or an internship.

If you have been permitted to stay in Germany for three months, are not (or no longer) obliged to live in an initial reception center for asylum seekers (also reception center, arrival center or anchor center) and have already found an employer who would like to hire you, you can exercise an employment are allowed.

The immigration authorities usually involve the Federal Employment Agency in processing your application, which checks the working conditions. After an uninterrupted stay in Germany of 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), you must apply for the employment permit for the specific training position individually. School-based vocational training does not require a permit.

The employment permit is issued for a limited period of time for the duration of the approval of the Federal Employment Agency, at the longest until the residence permit expires.

The following restrictions apply:

Gainful employment is generally prohibited as long as you are obliged to live in an initial reception facility. You can only be allowed to work if your asylum procedure has not been completed within nine months.

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 your If you applied for asylum after August 31, 2015, you cannot receive a work permit during the asylum procedure.

There is also no access to the German labor market for asylum seekers whose asylum procedure has been rejected as obviously unfounded or inadmissible and for whose action no suspensive effect has been ordered.