IOA - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, September 24, 1998


Germany shows
angst over
chanoincr sciPt

NATION/WORLD



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MUNICH, Germany (AP) - He's
only 14 years old, a burly kid with a
violent streak. Yet, he has come to sym-
bolize one of the prickliest campaign
issues in this year's German elections:
foreigners and what to do with them.
The Turkish teen-ager, who has a
long history of fights, vandalism and
petty thefts, was turned into a poster
child for conservatives pushing for a
crackdown on criminal foreigners.
Nevermind that the boy, known sim-
ply as Mehmet, was born and raised in
Munich. They want him deported to
Turkey. Doesn't matter that his law-
abiding, tax-paying parents have lived
and worked here for 30 years. They
should be sent back, too.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Bavarian
ally, the Christian Social Union, credits
its hard line with Mehmet for helping it
win state elections in the deeply conser-
vative state earlier this month.
But Mehmet's case also has resonat-
ed in the national campaign for parlia-
mentary elections Sunday. He repre-
sents Germany's angst about a chang-
ing society, where 7 million foreigners
live among 75 million Germans.
"I don't know if other people deal with
the subject of foreigners more calmly
than Germans, but in Germany there's a
very strong feeling that foreigners arc
strange," says Joachim Graffe, head of
social services in Munich. "There's a
noticeable 'us-and-them' feeling.
And in times of economic uncertainty,
with unemployment stubbornly stuck
above 10 percent, "the foreigner offers a
chance for the public to vent its anger"
In a Forsa survey conducted for Die
Woche newspaper and released last
month, 52 percent of Germans said
there are too many foreigners in
Germany, and 10 percent said they
could see themselves voting for a far-
right party. Forsa surveyed 1,006 eligi-
ble voters nationwide.
Many Germans did turn to far-right
parties in April, when the anti-foreigner
German People's Union came from
nowhere to score 13 percent in a state
election in eastern Germany.
But the issue has gone beyond
extremists accusing foreigners of steal-
ing German jobs and milking the wel-
fare system. Even mainstream parties
talk tough about curtailing the influx of
refugees.

Officials in Kohl's conservative gov-
ernment insist Germany is not "an
immigration land" and rule out propos-
als for dual citizenship.
The challenger, Social Democrat
Gerhard Schroeder, while supporting
dual citizenship, joins calls for deport-
ing foreigners who commit crimes here,
despite protests from his traditionally
leftist party.
The federal government's commis-
sioner for foreigner affairs last month
chastised both sides for campaigning
"on the backs of foreigners."
The very public soul-searching is
indicative of Germany's struggle to
define a role for foreigners who have
lived here for decades and for the waves
that have come since the fall of the Iron
Curtain.
Many new arrivals are refugees from
regional conflicts taken in by Germany
until the situation at home settles down.
There are also ethnic Germans from the
former Soviet Union with legal claims
to citizenship, and, many fear, criminal
gangs from the former eastern bloc.
Even those who have been here for
generations find integration difficult.
They include Germany's 2 million
Turks, many of whom were among the
"guest workers" invited here in the
1960s and 1970s.
Like Mehmet's parents. The boy's
lawyer says the parents don't consider
themselves German, but Mehmet, born
here, does.
In jail since his latest scrape with the
law in July, Mehmet gets letters from
German friends, but not from his par-
ents. They can only write in Turkish,
which he can't read.
The thought of being deported to
turkey, which he's only visited for short
vacations, fills him with dread.
"He says very clearly: 'What am I
supposed to do down there?'the lawyer,
Alexander Eberth, says. "le thinks it's
OK that he will bepunished for the lat-
est incident, but why is he to be sent out
of the country -- and not his three
cohorts who did the exact same thing?"
Iavarian courts have blocked the
expulsion of Mehmet's parents, but
Mehmet is still in legal limbo. le goes
on trial Sept. 30 on charges of causing
bodily harm stemming from the tight in
July, and his residency permit may not
be renewed if convicted.

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I

5PHOTO
Hundreds of Muscovites wait in line yesterday for a job fair in Moscow. As Russia endures Its latest financial crisis and companies fire thousands of employees,
the country's fledgling middle class is joining job fairs in a desperate hunt for work.
usslan middle cass has tou o un

MOSCOW (AP) - Primly dressed Russians
waited in a line hundreds long, shuffling for-
ward, somber and unsure of what they would
find at the end.
All they found were other frustrated job
seekers shoving and elbowing each other
toward small booths, asking desperate ques-
tions - "How much are you paying accoun-
tants?" - and getting painful answers.
"Well, how much experience have you got?
None?" came the reply, and then an alterna-
tive: "We pay truck drivers 300 rubles ($19) a
month."
While the country endures its latest finan-
cial crisis and companies fire thousands, it's
Russia's fledgling middle class that is lining up
in a desperate hunt for work - and finding
that the class they belonged to may no longer
exist.
When Communism fell, many Russians
found work with private firms that paid them
enough to live comfortably, travel and buy
more luxury goods.
That created a rhiddle class that never could
have existed during Soviet times, when private
companies were banned and western amenities
were too expensive for all but the elite.
the latest economic crunch, and yesterday's
job fair in southern Moscow, showed how frag-
ile the middle class was, and how desperate
those who belonged to it are to sustain their

"People are first looking at how much the job
pays, and then whether it falls withing their
speciatya

new lives.
"People are first looking at how much the
job pays, and then whether it falls within their
specialty," said Alexander Lugovoi, a manager
with a company that reworks hard metals.
"Really, they're looking for anything avail-
able."
Most of the job offers were for work in fac-
tories, the city bus system or in other state-
owned entities that offered wages of about
$100 a month. The jobs most sought, with
companies that pay wages on time and offer
chances for advancement, are nearly nonexis-
tent.
"There's nothing for me here," said 40-year-
old Margarita Kolosova, an accountant who
was fired earlier this summer. "There's no
demand for people of my age or specialty. If lI'd
known it would be like this, I wouldn't have
come.
Some lined up to talk with lawyers, job
counselors and even psychologists for advice

- Alexander Lugovoi
ager with a company that reworks hard metals S
to better their mostly fruitless efforts. Others
already had found a strategy for finding work:
Settle for less.
"I came looking for something that would
pay 5500 to $1,000 a month," said Artur Girsh,
who lost his job when his food import compa-
ny went bankrupt at the start of the crisis.
"But if I got even half that, it would be
acceptable," Girsh said.
Even those willing to take lower wages said
it wasn't easy to find work that suited their
experience or met their minimal expectations
for payment.
"I'm looking for construction work, some-
thing that pays around 2,000 rubles ($125) a
month," said Andrei Tsaryov, who came in
from the Saratov region to test his luck in
Moscow's job market.
"Back home, they've been withholding my
salary for half a year. Even though I'm not
having much luck, I've got to keep looking,"
Tsaryov said.

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