This immigrant population is disproportionately connected to almost all of the social problems of modern Germany. Yet the problem that has transfixed the country is, very understandably, the problem of crime. In Berlin, young men of immigrant stock are three times as likely to commit a crime as young men of German background, reports Germany's state broadcaster, Deutsche Welle. In a September interview, Chancellor Merkel endorsed claims that religious young men of Muslim origin were more likely to commit acts of violence than other young Germans.
These crimes seem increasingly the work of criminal gangs of immigrant origin that organize resistance to police authority in what the German media -- with tabloid exaggeration -- increasingly call "No Go areas." Violent assaults upon police officers jumped 60 percent between 2005 and 2009, according to the German newspaper Bild.
Less spectacular -- but as important to ordinary people's feelings of security -- is the perceived deterioration of public order: declining schools, rising welfare rolls and foiled terrorist attacks.
Because of very low birth rates among old-stock Germans, the proportion of foreign-born is highest among those younger than 20s. In the poor Berlin neighborhood of Wedding, three out of four students and at least half the parents lived on unemployment benefits and welfare, even before the global economic crisis. In 2005, The New York Times interviewed a teacher in a Wedding high school:
"In Wedding, [Evelyn] Rühle says, immigrant children today speak poorer German and have less contact with German culture than when she started teaching 20 years ago. Many Muslim students ... go to Koran classes outside of school and speak only Turkish or Arabic at home. Meanwhile, the growth of digital television has made a host of Turkish- and Arabic-language channels available, intensifying language problems and nurturing identities that are informed more by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the war in Iraq than by the local German environment."
Replace the word "Germany" in this article with "America" and the word "Muslims" with "Latinos", "Blacks" or hell, just use "Muslims" anyway and you have the modern GOP complaining about how "American culture" is under threat from those damn ferners and that we should segregate as much as possible because this is a "Christian nation."
Frum just can't help himself, like most Republicans. Not even trying to hide the hate for those who aren't "American" enough. Maybe enough scapegoating can keep it that way.
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