Word: asylums
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ISRAELI AUTHORITIES NEVER IMAGINED WHAT MEDIA stars they would make of 415 alleged Palestinian militants when they deported the lot to Lebanon two weeks ago. But celebrities they have become. The Lebanese government refused to grant asylum to the deportees, so the group spent the week shuffling through freezing weather between a checkpoint manned by the Lebanese army and another, three miles away, guarded by the Israelis and their proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army. At least two exiles were injured when the S.L.A. fired warning shots and mortars at the group as it approached Israel's proclaimed "security zone...
...DOOR IS NOT CLOSED YET, BUT THERE IS FINALly a move to narrow the entry. After months of seeking consensus, Chancellor Helmut Kohl's ruling coalition and the opposition Social Democrats have come to terms on a revision of Germany's liberal asylum laws. The parties insist that the fundamental right of asylum for the persecuted has been preserved. But the new provisions will allow the government to turn away individual asylum seekers who enter Germany from a nation that observes the Geneva Convention on refugees. Prospective claimants passing through Poland or Czechoslovakia, for example, on their way to Germany...
Given the current political climate, it is difficult to imagine a far- reaching reshaping of popular attitudes. Although the cost of supporting the estimated 500,000 asylum seekers who are expected in Germany this year is less than 5% of what is being pumped into the rehabilitation of eastern Germany, most western Germans, polls reveal, consider the asylum seekers to be the country's biggest problem. Xenophobia has been on the rise since the mid-' 80s, says Eberhard Seidel-Pielen, an expert on the right-wing scene, and "since the economic problems of unification have become dominant, foreigners are used...
Although a constitutional amendment that would restrict the provision of asylum is imminent, few analysts believe it will make much difference. Germany is not about to deport hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers overnight; a continuing influx of illegal immigrants is considered unavoidable; as Molln showed, there are other targets as well -- the 6.2 million foreigners living in Germany...
...most contemporary Germans -- for example, the 350,000 who recently marched against racism in Berlin -- stand before we pronounce our easy and self-righteous j'accuse. We might remember, for example, that the German constitution has for decades included one of the most liberal and generous policies toward political asylum seekers anywhere in the world...