tatus in the advanced industrial society they have entered. Those cultural differences, the high unemployment rate, and other negative stereotypes lead to xenophobia, discrimination and racism.The seemingly uncontrollable influx of foreigners led to anti-foreigner violence by neo-Nazi and other extremist groups and to a more general public clamor to cut back the flow of aliens. The Economist writes The neo-Nazis who recently bludgeoned a Mozambican to death in a park in Dessau, some 100 km south-west of Berlin, said bluntly they had acted out of Fremdenhass: hatred of foreigners. (The Economist 2000, 33). The anti-foreigner organizations are well organized and difficult to uncover. Secret meetings are held and with the use of the Internet, important messages can be sent and received worldwide. The police are helpless and there is not much they can do about it. Neo-Nazis and other extremists also meet in public to demonstrate and as long as their purpose does not include violence, nothing is done by the officials to curb their protest. The police are meant to protect all people in an equal way; however, in many cases police violence appears to have been racially motivated. More often complaints of ill treatment by police officers are reported. The Wochenendmagazin (Dortmund newspaper) reports about such an incident. An Algerian asylum seeker alleged that he had been ill treated by Dortmund police officers in March 1998. He claimed that he had been stopped in the street in the early hours of the morning by two uniformed police officers, which had told him to raise his hands. When he had asked why, he was reportedly told to shut his mouth. He was taken to a place where a crime had allegedly been committed in order to see whether the victims recognized him as the perpetrator. When it became apparent that he had nothing to do with the crime, he was told to go away. At this point he became upset and suggested that he had been arrested only be...
