Also threatened with possible deportation are all those young foreigners who, in their hopeless predicament, break the law. Their transgressions are largely crimes of aggression and sex offenses – crimes that are common, particularly for people in conflict situations. In comparison, delinquent Germans of the same age are more likely to be guilty of grand larceny, trafficking in stolen goods, and blackmail.
For this reason, experts are emphatically demanding an abstention from deportations for foreign children and adolescents who become delinquent, since in most cases this is tantamount to “social execution.”
The chances that the Federal Republic will treat young foreigners more humanely in the future are slim, however. The administrative directives of individual federal states make clear that there is no desire to implement an integration policy.
Every year, 110,000 children are born to foreign parents in our country. They are not allowed to call our country their homeland. Yet they also have no other homeland when they turn eighteen. What about their human rights?
“The foreigner problem is only partially the problem of foreigners. The other, major part is the problem of Germans,” stated German Federal President Walter Scheel.
Are we able to admit that?
Source: Theobald Gross, “Chancenlosigkeit macht Jugend aggressive” [“A Lack of Opportunities Makes Youths Aggressive”], Welt der Arbeit, November 16, 1978.
Translation: Allison Brown
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