Politics

I've been here a bit over 6 months now, and have been noticing a bit of trend. With some elections around the corner and ramped up political grandstanding, some issues have too obnoxious to ignore.

I said in an earlier post that the Netherlands is much more supportive of immigrants, in helping most of them pay for classes to learn the language and the culture. The flip side, of course, being that non-European Union immigrants are required to learn the language and culture.

Despite this (mostly) helpful approach, there are some political parties advocating a less helpful and more punitive approach to immigration in general. The more (in)famous is the PVV, the party of Geert Wilders. The PVV was the third most popular party at the last general elections, and is part of the coalition government currently running the country, along with the two most popular parties. The major platform of the PVV is anti-Islamist - in fact, it was originally formed to oppose Turkey being admitted to the EU, due to being a largely Muslim nation.

Wilders is currently on trial for discrimination and inciting hatred (a crime here) against Muslims, basically for saying that Islam is facsist, Moroccans are violent, and advocating banning the Koran for being comparable to "Mein Kampf". His defense is that his statements should be protected as free speech. In addition to wanting to ban the Koran, he wants to remove the constitutional promise of equality under the law, replacing it with the cultural supremacy of the jewish-christian tradions. Some other gems he's proposed: no non-Western immigration for a while, preaching only allowed in the Dutch language, no new mosques or islamic schools, and special ghettos for "undesirable" people (and their families) to be forced to live in for a while. He thinks the primary focus of Dutch foreign policy should be the eradication of Islam.

The PVV has also come out strongly against non-Western immigration, more recently including Western European members of the EU in that category. He thinks unemployed Eastern European migrants that are legally in the country should be deported if they become unemployed, even though they have been paying unemployment taxes just like everyone else.

Unfortunately, there is a common Dutch perception that even the Dutch-born children of Dutch immigrants with full Dutch citizenship are still "immigrants" and not really Dutch - they are seen as outsiders. This causes some of the more idiotic Dutch to treat the children of immigrants as second-class citizens, something which those children know is wrong, but is still happening and mostly allowed. As a result, these children tend to either 1) rebel and get in trouble or 2) become highly educated and move to a country where they can get a job. Both results kinda suck, according to the politicians always talking about attracting and retaining highly educated immigrants, and the politicians complaining about people whose parents were born elsewhere being a bunch of useless criminals.

One way this discrimination against "outsiders" is expressed is by silly job requirements - frequently a native level of Dutch speaking is listed as a requirement in job listings, even though there are no interactions with customers and fluent Dutch is sufficient.

As an English speaker that hasn't looked for a job yet, I haven't been discriminated against. In fact, strangers assume I'm Dutch until they start talking to me and I ask them if they speak English. But I have an Egyptian friend from class that has co-workers get upset if him and another Arabic speaker use Arabic to explain something work-related that they can't handle in English or Dutch. He was honestly upset about this - his co-workers had hurt his feelings by demanding that he only speak Dutch in their presence at work.

With that sort of thing happening, and all of the political bullshit bouncing around, I can easily understand why even the highly educated migrants want to go elsewhere. Who wants to contribute to a society that constantly tells you that you have less worth than they do?