This article was written a few weeks ago about the recent Austrian election. While there was no surprise that the Social Democrat party won 30 percent of the votes, there was a huge surprise at the amount of votes gained by the Freedom Party, a far-right party which is against immigration. They won a shocking 18 percent of the votes, which was a gain of seven percent from the previous federal election. Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the far-right Freedom Party has anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant views. His party uses this to drag in the attention of the voters because they place the blame for Austria's economic woes squarely on immigrants and foreign competition. This view on immigrants in general has started to gain pace throughout Europe, if not the world. According to the CIA website, Austria’s ethic groups are a staggering 91 percent Austrians. Now this statistic makes one wonder; is immigration really a big deal issue in Austria? Another six percent have an ethic decent from Europe. It obviously seems evident that Muslims and immigration in general is really not a big issue at the moment, rather they are using a scare tactic in regards to the recent economic woes the world is experiencing right now. The immigration rate is low and it seems clear that there really isn't any blame on immigrants for the economic woes a country experiences. It seems a very scary possibility that the Freedom party might win the election in the near future. It seems that the Austrian citizens are not satisfied with the government and are looking for change and surprising, the far right group might one day win office which would bring an ultimate end to immigration in Austria and most importantly what would they do to the immigrants who are currently living in Austria?
The New York Times
Article by: Nicholas Kulish
International: Page A7
Monday, September 29, 2008
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