Re: Euro-Immigrants

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Atkinson" <johnmatkinson@yahoo.com>
> > You are right about the Arabs and Slavic people.
> > I think the "many are Turkish" is partly a matter of
> > perception.
>
> In Giessen and the general Frankfurt-am-Main area, US
> GIs are not warned about gangs of drunken
> anti-American Slavs, Viets, or Koreans.  We _are_
> given briefings about the Turks--

Don't know when you served over here. Until the end of the Cold War,
Turks/Kurds would probably have been the only foreigner group whose
youths
would form street gangs. Partly due to them living more concwentrated
than
most other groups, partly out of a reaction to discrimination.

Nowadays, violently criminal foreigners tend to be Albanians, Kosovars
or
Rumanians - not that I could tell them apart in a dark alley. However,
there
are enough German criminals, remember. A lot of petty crime is still
done by
drug addicts, most of whom are German. And in some places there are
German
gangs (Neo-Nazis, soccer hooligans etc.) But overall, I think we are
still a
pretty safe place, even in seedy neighbourhoods.

> ... and some of them seem
> to riot when Kurdish leaders are imprisioned so I
> presumed they are at least partly Kurdish.

Yes, I already mentioned that. After Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK leader
was
caught and he declared a cease-fire, things seem to have quieted down
both
here and in Turkey, at least the Kurds are out of the headlines.

> I've never heard of a US GI being stabbed by anyone other than a
> Turk, and Turks tend to travel in packs so they are actually a threat
to
GIs (who also travel in packs).

Some time ago there was a case where a black American (not sure whether
a
GI) was very seriously beaten by a Neo-Nazi gang :-(

Greetings