The regulations contained in the Foreign Labour Act of 1976 (Ausländerbeschäftigungsgesetz - AuslBG) and in the related ordinances are based on the following fundamental goals:
- to penalise illegal employment of foreigners.
When the AuslBG was originally conceived it was thought that foreign workers would regularly be employed in Austria only in the short term in order to relieve a specific manpower shortage and that they would then return to their native countries. Consequently, fixed-term and workplace-linked work permits were the primary control mechanism.
Because the inflow and outflow of foreign workers did not proceed as expected and many foreigners chose Austria as the focal point of their lives, remaining in employment there in the long term, it became necessary to adjust the regulations in order to promote the integration of foreign workers who had long been resident and of young foreigners who grew up in Austria, and to afford them greater mobility on the Austrian labour market.
The massive inflow of foreign workers in 1991 as a consequence of the political developments in the former Eastern Block and of the demands from industry for more manpower led to a significant increase in the supply of foreign labour.
In order to protect the existing domestic labour force and integrated foreigners, admission of new entrants was considerably restricted and new legislation was passed concerning the requirements demanded of foreigners wishing to reside in Austria.
Since 1993 (when the Residency Act came into force), the federal government has annually defined the qualitative and quantitative criteria for immigration and residence of foreigners in Austria in the form of annual settlement quotas for dependent employees, self-employed persons, relatives of resident foreigners and foreigners who wish to settle in Austria for private reasons without intending to earn income. The 1997 Aliens Act, which came into effect at the beginning of 1998 and combines regulations on residency and the affairs of the aliens office, is now following the same practice. The federal government's Settlement Ordinance annually defines an immigration quota for all types of new immigrants on the basis of labour market figures. The aim behind the 1997 Aliens Act is, on the one hand, to base new immigration more stringently on the actual possibilities for integration and, on the other, to enable foreigners who have been legally resident in Austria for several years to strengthen their position.
At the same time, efforts to integrate not only long-term resident foreign workers but also long-term resident relatives of foreign workers are made possible by virtue of the amendments to the Foreign Labour Act which have applied since 1.1.1998. The aim is to gradually find employment for these people in accordance with the demands of the labour market. However, the principle introduced with the Residency Act, according to which an employer may only employ a foreign worker who is entitled to reside in Austria and is in possession of a valid work permit from the labour market authorities, remains in force.
The AuslBG's control system has been continually advanced since 1995 and the Labour Inspectorate's monitoring activities intensified in order to prevent a shift to illegal employment.
