At 20.6 percent, the official jobless rate in Germany's ''new Eastern states'' is double the West's 10 percent. Although Germany's liberal asylum policies have made it into one of the most ethnically diverse states in Europe, with a foreign population of more than 10 percent in Western Germany, the foreigners in Eastern Germany account for less than 2 percent. The rise in the attacks coincides with a search for solutions. But neither parental activism nor police crackdowns will attack the root problems, Mr. Wagner said. What is needed, he said, is a massive budget to hire and train armies of social workers to work in the inner cities and instill a sense of tolerance and democracy.
New polls document the extent of the anti-immigrant bias.