!!!Flüchtlinge

Refugees: "A refugee is someone who because of a "well-founded" fear 
of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, 
membership in a particular social group or political opinion, is 
outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to 
such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that 
country.", according to the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status 
of Refugees, which Austria joined in 1955.

\\
As Germans were driven out of Poland, the then CSR and Hungary after 
World War II, Austria took in a total of 237,932 ethnic German 
refugees after 1945. Afterwards Austria was faced with three 
large-scale waves of refugees: in 1956 when 180,432 Hungarians fled 
their country (when the Hungarian uprising against the Soviet 
Communists was crushed), in 1968, when approximately 162,000 Czechs 
and Slovaks fled the CSSR (in the wake of the repression of the Prague 
Spring) and in 1981, when 33,142 Poles fled Poland (after martial law 
was imposed). Aside from these three waves of refugees, the number of 
refugees remained at between 2,000 and 10,000 annually until the 
mid-1980s. Following the fall of the Iron Curtain, the number of 
refugees rose, reaching an annual record high of 27,306 political 
asylum applications in 1991. In response to the opening of Eastern 
Europe and the subsequent wave of refugees, the Asylum Law of 1991 was 
passed. With its entry into force and the adoption of other measures 
(e.g. intensification of border patrols), the number of refugees 
rapidly declined.

\\
In 1994 there were around 60,000 refugees from former Yugoslavia in 
Austria due to the Balkan War. Austria granted these refugees 
temporary residence permits ("De-facto-Refugees"). Until the end of 
the 1980s Austria enjoyed great international acclaim as a refugee 
state. Attempts to restrict possible abuses of refugee status have led 
to more restrictive asylum policies, which have been criticised by 
organisations such as Amnesty International.

!Literature
K. Althaler and A. Hohenwarter (ed.), Torschluss. 
Wanderungsbewegungen und Politik in Europa, 1992.


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