Austria: Media Outrage Over Plans to Require Asylum Seekers Integrate, ‘Show Gratitude’

Austria Migrants Protest
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Virginia Hale

Mainstream media outlets have affected shock over plans to require asylum seekers in south Austria to sign a list of ‘10 Commandments’ including a promise not to break the law.

Gottfried Waldhäusl, the populist politician in charge of migrant-related issues in the administration of Lower Austria, said the list was designed to be a “positive” initiative that would help migrants integrate, reports Welt.

Rules outlined in the written agreement, which would be handed to asylum seekers alongside application documents, include requirements that newcomers promise to learn German, respect the law and to resolve conflicts ‘without using violence’.

Migrants wanting to stay in the EU nation would also have to agree to respect freedom of religion, to raise any children they have in accordance with Austrian values and to show gratitude to their host — the country’s taxpayers — when they sign the list of commandments.

“We protect these people for a certain period and give them everything they need. We expect a certain gratitude in return,” asserted the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) regional minister.

While Waldhäusl stressed the “common sense” nature of his proposals, which will reportedly be brought into effect “soon”, globalist news outlets treated the plans as outrageous, even drawing parallels with 1930s Germany.

Lower Austria “demands refugees ‘show gratitude’ and adopt ‘Austrian values’” blared a headline on the U.S. website and former magazine Newsweek, above an article telling readers that the FPÖ “has regularly been accused of promoting and facilitating anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and xenophobic ideology”. The article compared Austria’s coalition-governing FPÖ’s policies to those pursued by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party in the 1930s.

Another outlet keen to link the patriotic party and its conservative policies to wartime Europe was the newspaper Kleine Zeitung, which pointed to a story last year accusing Waldhäusl of using ‘stealth Nazi jargon’ implying mass murder when he urged authorities to mete out “special treatment” for asylum seekers with long criminal records who were “not willing to integrate”.

Regarding the Ten Commandments policy itself, the regional daily claimed it was “unclear” why FPÖ and its supporters might want migrants required to sign such a document, pointing to comments by NGO the Austrian Integration Fund declaring that asylum seekers already receive instruction on “the principles of living together such as democracy, freedom of expression, non-violence and the rule of law”

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