In a recent opinion poll of Maurice de Hond, the question was asked, "Do you think Dutch society has lost its identity?"A whopping 61% said yes, 36% said no.
So the question begs: Where are these numbers represented in the parliament?
Fair enough question, though not really an issue in Holland.
Herbert...Quote:In a recent opinion poll of Maurice de Hond, the question was asked, "Do you think Dutch society has lost its identity?"A whopping 61% said yes, 36% said no.
So the question begs: Where are these numbers represented in the parliament?
nimh...Quote:Fair enough question, though not really an issue in Holland.
the likes of elected representatives such as Geert Wilders and Rita Verdonk have to be kept under 24-hour guard to protect them against being murdered by immigrants... ?
Dutch MP lied to obtain political asylum
Radio Netherlands, 12 May 2006
Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali has admitted she lied to the immigration authorities in the early 1990s in order to obtain political asylum in the Netherlands. The Dutch TV programme Zembla has established that, rather than fleeing the violence and warfare in her land of origin Somalia, as she claimed, she spent more than ten years in reasonable comfort in Kenya before applying for asylum first in Germany and then in the Netherlands. She said she lied because she was afraid of being turned down a second time.
However, she told the leadership of the conservative VVD party the true story when she applied to become a VVD candidate in 2002. The party has confirmed this. Apparently, fellow VVD member Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk recently told her that, if she had been minister at the time and had known the truth, she would have had Ms Hirsi Ali deported.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: hero or phony?
Expatica
Dutch Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk claims to be decisive and consistent; she "steers a straight course through the sea". She says her immigration and asylum policies are strict but fair.
Perhaps then the Liberal Party (VVD) minister could tell us the difference between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Taida Pasic?
Somali-born Hirsi Ali lied when she was 22 in order to get asylum in the Netherlands and improve her life.
Kosovar Taida Pasic, 18, effectively lied to get a tourist visa to re-enter the Netherlands in 2005 to complete the Dutch education she was receiving before her family was refused asylum here.
Verdonk took a personal interest in ensuring Pasic, whom she publicly branded a liar, was deported from the country before she could take her final exams here. She has to do that in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
How decisive and consistent. Verdonk does not like liars, she says, and liars don't get past her immigration officials. Well not now, anyway. Hirsi Ali is a different story.
Verdonk says Hirsi Ali would not have got in to the Netherlands had she been minister at the time. However Hirsi Ali has nothing to fear now despite the porkies she told 14 years ago.
News programme Zembla reported on 11 May that Hirsi Ali hid her actual name, Hirsi Magan, and her age when she sought asylum here in 1992. Immigration officials might otherwise have established she was under the care of the UNHCR in Kenya. She was granted asylum here in a record five weeks. How come?
She told a heart-rending story about having to flee Somalia to escape an arranged marriage, went to a refugee camp in Kenya, and from there got to the Netherlands. Once here, she faced the constant fear of retribution from her angry family. The right story for an asylum seeker. [..]
Hirsi Ali was living in Kenya for over 10 years before coming here and didn't experience five civil wars in Somalia as prominent VVD member and current EU commissioner Nelie Kroes claimed in 2002.
Hirsi Ali said, and the VVD confirms, she told them back then she had lied to the immigration service. Why then did the VVD present Hirsi Ali as a person who survived the turmoil in Somalia? [..]
As she said herself: asylum seekers tend to gild the lily to ensure they get residence permits. Who among us would not have told a few white lies to ensure a better life? [..] But one nagging question remains. Why is this former asylum seeker a member of the same party as Verdonk? This is the minister who wants to deport gays and Christian converts back to Iran. This is the minister who has vowed to keep economic migrants masquerading as refugees from getting into the country.
Why is it OK for Hirsi Ali to lie to make a better life for herself in the Netherlands, but Pasic can't even be allowed to stay a few weeks extra to finish her exams?
Liberals don't care Hirsi Ali lied to get asylum in 1992
Expatica
12 May 2006
[..] Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk said on Friday that Hirsi Ali need not worry about facing repercussions for what she did 14 years ago. But she repeated she would have deported Hirsi Ali if she had been the minister back in 1992. "I don't like lies," Verdonk said on Friday.
Hirsi Ali shot to fame in 2002 when her criticism of aspects of Islam and the treatment of women in Muslim societies led to death threats. She joined the Dutch Liberal Party (VVD) and was elected to parliament in 2003.
[..] Hirsi Ali said she came clean about the lies she told to get asylum when she joined the Liberal Party (VVD) in 2002. Yet prominent VVDer (and now EU Commissioner) Nelie Kroes described Hirsi Ali as a person who had lived through five civil wars in Somalia. This was not true as Hirsi Ali lived in Kenya for over 10 years before coming to the Netherlands.
A spokesperson for the VVD said the party had been aware that Hirsi Ali lied about her name and date of birth when seeking asylum. This was not seen as a barrier to her joining the party or becoming one of its MPs.
[..] Her real name is Hirsi Magan. Her father was an opponent of the regime in Somalia and was jailed there. Hirsi Ali and her brother were sent to Kenya where she lived from the age of 10 to 22.
Other Somalis living as refugees in Kenya were refused asylum in the Netherlands in 1992 because Kenya was considered a safe country. Hirsi Ali, who had refugee status in Kenya, told Dutch immigration officials she was fleeing from Somali. She was granted asylum within five weeks, an apparent record. [..]
So a high-profile celebrity slipped into the country illegally a whole 14-years ago... big deal.
I am deeply ashamed of the low country where I spent half my life. The narrowminded [..] attitude of my dull-witted, hypocritic and cowardly countrymen is as amazing as it is disgusting.
The past five years, the VVD has indeed been capitalising again on the resentment against immigrants, asylum-seekers and Muslims, especially through the person of Immigration and Integration Minister "Iron" Rita Verdonk. The party is currently holding a leadership contest, and Verdonk is actually the prime contender to win.
Developments around Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch filmmaker, author and MP who is best known for her strident stances against Islam, have rushed on at breathtaking pace the last four days [..]
Initially, the response from her party, the VVD, to the TV broadcast that revealed how she had made up a story in order to get asylum in the Netherlands fourteen years ago, was that it presented no new facts. [..]
The issue raised uncomfortable questions for the party, however. The VVD is the most prolific proponent in the Netherlands of a zero-tolerance policy regarding asylum-seekers [..] Soon, [..] List Fortuyn MP Nawijn [..] demanded an inquest into Hirsi Ali's Dutch citizenship. Having received asylum on a lie, she should never have been allowed to subsequently apply for and receive citizenship.
In response, Immigration Minister Verdonk, currently running for VVD leadership in party primaries, reversed her stance and ordered such an investigation. In fact, she declared to parliament that, based on current information, Hirsi Ali "is supposed to not have received Dutch citizenship". An investigation into her citizenship could ultimately lead to Hirsi Ali being deported.
Hirsi Ali has reacted with bafflement, telling reporters, "have they gone mad?". Having already planned to move to the US next year, she in turn declared that she would resign from parliament and leave already in September.
Bos: CDA puts religious tolerance at risk
Trouw [a mainstream Christian newspaper]
1 June 2006
Labour Party leader Bos thinks the Christian-Democratic CDA puts the relationship between the secular majority and religious minorities in our society at risk.
He attributes this to internal division among the Christian-Democrats in the integration debate and Islamophobia on the part of parliamentary CDA-leader Verhagen.
"If religious tolerance in the Netherlands is faltering, this is because of the uncertainty in the heart of christian politics", said Bos yesterday in a debate with Christian Union-leader Rouvoet about the role of religion in the public sphere. According to Bos, his party has no urge to disturb religious tolerance. "I believe in a pluriform society with spiritual liberty for the different [religious] convictions. In the CDA I discern trouble with pluriformity, because many Christian-Democrats have problems with Islam."
The Islam-fear of the CDA parliamentary party has led, according to Bos, to it now having become almost impossible to found Muslim schools and to Parliament having declared itself in favour of a ban on the burqa. "I don't think it's strange that the Social-Democrats have voted against that ban, I do think it's strange that the Christian-Democrats are finishing off freedom of religion", he said.
Within the CDA, according to the Labour Party-leader, Minister of Justice Donner as classic defender of basic rights and parliamentary party leader Verhagen with his fear of Islam are standing directly opposite each other. He placed Prime Minister Balkenende in between the two, because he takes the responsibility for the tough integration and immigration policies of VVD-Minister Verdonk. "It is still unclear who will win this fight", said Bos.
Rouvoet too, said he was unhappy with the course the CDA was steering in the question of integration, because it does not testify of essential tolerance towards minorities of different convictions.
I dont often agree with Bos, but I can assent in his criticism of Verhagen. Maxime Verhagen is a representative of conservative catholicism and comes from the KVP [Catholic People's Party]. Comparable with the CSU in Bavaria, say. Nothing Christian about it, just rigid conservatism and cultural christianity. He represents, the way I see it, a totally different current than [Prime Minister] Balkenende who, with his reformed background and knowledge of christian-social thought, at least knows how it should be done. With a Catholic from the south on top my vote, in any case, definitely doesn't go to the CDA. It will be Rouvoet [of the Christian Union] then, after all.
Isn't it enough to make you cry to high heaven that a socialist party is against a ban on the burqa! And that just to get into the favour of the Muslim voter, under the motto, if we are just really tolerant, it'll all turn out ok still.
The whiff of xenophobia in Europe
By Frida Ghitis
AMSTERDAM ?- A cold, steady rain beats down on a busy street just a few minutes from Amsterdam's center. Muslim women, scarves wrapped tightly around their heads, scurry to catch the approaching tram.
They dodge the oncoming bicycle traffic of Turkish, Indonesian, Surinamese and other commuters of every age, color and nationality, who pedal with their heads down, shielding their eyes from the raw North Sea wind.
This is Linnaeus Street, the scene of a gruesome turning point in this nation's modern history. Here, in November 2004, a radical Islamist who was the son of Moroccan immigrants murdered controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. With that act he added caustic fuel to the immigration debate.
On both sides of the Atlantic, immigration has taken a top spot on the roster of national priorities. The political maneuvering, tense debate and nervousness over what this discussion says about the national character permeate the arguments in Europe and in America.
Yet the fundamental fears Americans wrestle with differ sharply from the concerns Europeans express.
Americans' principal worry is economics. Most immigrants enter the U.S. looking for jobs. Low-skilled workers, millions of them undocumented, take low-wage jobs, driving down incomes for the poor, while providing employers with cheap labor.
In Europe, economics plays
See page 2
page 2
EUROPE: Integration at crux of discussion
only a supporting role in the drama. The main concerns, instead, are the extremism and intolerance found among some Muslim immigrants. With the focus almost exclusively on immigrants from Islamic countries, a distinct xenophobic whiff hangs over the debate.
Van Gogh's murderer, for example, had been infuriated by the filmmaker's irreverence toward Islam and was particularly aggrieved by his film "Submission," which decried Islam's treatment of women.
When tens of thousands of Amsterdam residents, grieving and angry, converged on the ancient Dam Square after van Gogh's killing, some defiantly banged pots and pans, vowing not to let extremists silence more voices.
Just as in America, the debate here has scrambled traditional political alignments. In the U.S., liberal activists, worried about the welfare of undocumented workers, have joined with conservative businesses eager to protect their affordable workforce. And right-wing anti-immigration groups stand on the same side as some liberal labor groups seeking to protect American wages.
In Europe, anti-immigration forces come mostly from the right. Many liberals worry about discrimination against peace-loving Muslims. Others, especially women's groups and gay organizations, have grown increasingly alarmed at the threat Islamists pose to progressive traditions.
That is true nowhere more than in the Netherlands. Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, assassinated in 2002 by a Dutch animalrights activist, first made the argument about defending liberal society from an assault by the outsiders within. Fortuyn, who was gay, challenged Dutch multiculturalism, saying the country was wrong to tolerate Muslim clerics who referred to gays as "pigs" and allowed men to beat their wives.
The Dutch-Somali politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who wrote the script for van Gogh's "Submission," took up the argument. Hirsi Ali?-who is moving to the U.S.?-warned about the threats to free speech from intolerant extremists and argued that some of the traditions of European Muslims threaten democratic societies.
The crux of the discussion in Europe is now integration. With rigid labor markets, immigrants and their children often struggle without jobs, remaining isolated, on welfare and vulnerable to the ranting of radicals. In the U.S., a nation more accustomed to immigrants that has more flexible markets, newcomers integrate more quickly into the mainstream.
Terrorist attacks in Madrid and London, as well as van Gogh's killing and other terrorist plots uncovered in the Netherlands, have focused the immigration debate almost exclusively on the influx of newcomers from Muslim countries.
Several European countries now require some would-be immigrants to take cultural tests as one of the criteria for admission. The details of the new rules are still being debated and refined. A DVD to help prepare for the Dutch exam shows topless women at the beach and gay men kissing. A proposed test in Germany asks applicants whether they believe in Israel's right to exist and think women should be allowed in public alone. The idea is to weed out the most intolerant, and to warn those who might be shocked by today's Europe.
The focus on immigration, ironically, misses the point that a large number of the perpetrators of extremist attacks in Europe, including van Gogh's killer, were born in Europe.
A Pakistani immigrant who runs a small tobacco shop just a few feet from the scene of the van Gogh assassination watches an imam walk past his store on his way to the neighborhood mosque. Life in Amsterdam, he says, has changed for him since the filmmaker was murdered. Some Dutch, he muses, are very nice people. But others, he says with a slight wince and deliberate vagueness, now treat him very differently.
