The foreigner gene

A story by Mark Anderson from South Africa.

Everyone knows that foreigners are personae non grata in Denmark. The sad fact is that many foreigners don't make things any easier for themselves and for the rest of us. Danes find themselves in a bit of a dilemma because they believe (and it's also true) that immigrant youth are the cause of most of the country's crime, but they can't say it because then they'll be labelled as racists. Far be it for me to come up with a solution, but the conservative coalition is going to make mincemeat of the foreigner debate and have us all out on our arses long before political correctness has had a chance to mouth a syllable of common sense. And when I say all, I mean not only foreigners, but also their Danish better halves. It's already happening. The far right are saying things that make sense to the average Jens Jensen and they don't care if their fellow Danes end up in the line of fire. The spectre of immigrant kids vandalising the bus shelters, terrorising people on their scooters, stealing and mugging is what is haunting Jens Jensen (that is, if he's not worried about the constantly looming spectre of salmonella in his chicken). So it's OK if the fight gets a bit dirty. In my opinion, immigrant youth are just a bunch of idiot kids with no sense of common good. Maybe they have their reasons for being the way they are. Maybe they're just a bunch of misunderstood and displaced souls (many of them have seen war and the general ugliness of humanity first-hand). Or maybe they're just bored out of their skulls. Denmark is a boring place, and no youth with an ounce of warm blood in his veins and an overwhelming urge to get rid of all that pent-up adolescent energy has any business living in a country where a cold and sterile kind of logic keeps the machine faithfully ticking over. Sometimes it just gets to me. Sometimes I feel like, I don't know. like I just want to go down to the park and beat up an old lady and take her purse. It must be something genetic. It must be some kind of foreigner gene.