ABSTRACT
If one drives on the highway from Vienna’s ‘Schwechat’ airport into the city, a barrage of colourful posters welcome everybody, proclaiming ‘Vienna is different’. This so-called ‘difference’, compared to other European capital cities, is said to lie in Vienna’s being less dirty, noisy and crowded. The Austrian government apparently wishes to keep it so, less crowded anyway: the Residence Act that went into effect on 1 July 1993 (and all the following laws and restrictions) not only closed the door to many potential immigrants, it also effectively empowered the immigration authorities to expatriate a large number of those who had lived legally in Austria for years.
