The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), the most popular political party in the country by a substantial margin according to the latest of a succession of polls, has announced its intention to launch a nationwide referendum that, if adopted by the people, would see all asylum seekers who have been convicted of a crime deported.
Calls for the referendum have come almost exactly two years after the infamous “Leonie case,” where three military-aged males from Afghanistan raped and murdered a 13-year-old Bavarian girl named Leonie before going on to callously dump her body on the side of a road in a residential area of Vienna.
Of the three perpetrators, all of whom had come to Austria in 2015 during the migrant crisis, one had been convicted of drug trafficking, had his asylum application rejected, and was issued a deportation order. Despite that, he continued to reside in the country before going on to commit the heinous crime.
The referendum also comes as Austria, with its population of just under nine million, witnessed the number of asylum applications filed between 2021 and 2022 triple, jumping from 39,930 to 108,490 in that time span, and representing the largest year-over-year percentage increase of any EU member state. Three out of four of the applicants were male.
Coincidentally, or perhaps not, the same year saw the number of crimes committed at asylum facilities increase by 57.5%. According to the FPÖ, nearly 10,000 asylum seekers living in Austria have criminal records.
In Austria, and in a whole host of other multicultural Western European countries, migrants and asylum seekers are often disproportionally represented in criminal cases, especially those involving violence and sex, as has been repeatedly evidenced by crime reports from interior ministries.
Now, the referendum on “immediately deporting asylum offenders” is seeking to rectify the increasingly out-of-control situation. Spearheading the campaign is the FPÖ Lower Austria leader Udo Landbauer, the state’s deputy governor, who recently said:
The government is hostage to the asylum lobby. ÖVP Interior Minister Karner produces only hot air, but delivers no solutions. The Greens applaud the asylum tsunami. Our families and children are left behind without protection.
Asylum offenders must be deported immediately—without compromise. Crackdowns must be taken after the first offense and not just after a criminal “career.” It is unacceptable that foreigners can continue to endanger the cohesion of the country because they have a greater right to security than our population. The Leonie case must not be repeated.
Tragically, cases like Leonie’s, where the perpetrators were migrants who had been known to the police for prior criminal convictions, have become increasingly common since the migrant crisis of 2015.
Although there are many of these cases, perhaps the best-known case is that of Pamela Mastropietro, an 18-year-old Italian national, who was murdered by Nigerian migrant drug dealer Innocent Oseghale who not only was living in Italy illegally but had a criminal record for dealing drugs. Mastropietro’s dismembered body was later found in two suitcases in the countryside outside the commune of Pollenza.
