Quoting Paul Belien, au1929 wrote:This indicates that the flight from Europe is related to a loss of confidence in the future of nations which have taken in the Trojan horse of Islamism, but which, unlike the Trojans, lack the guts to fight.
There's several facts that get in the way of this theory.
First: Of the people who emigrated from the Netherlands in 2006, almost half were not actually Dutchmen. Yes, you heard that right.
Almost half of these emigrants had themselves been born abroad. Most of them were returning to their homeland, some others were moving on to a third country.*
So thats half of the number of emigrants Paul Belien brandishes that straight off the bat doesnt fit in his "native Dutchmen flee from Muslim immigrants" theory.
Second: In fact, almost a third of the emigrants of 2006 had themselves been immigrants from non-Western countries. So we're talking Turks here, Surinamese, Caribbean Antilleans, Moroccans, who had moved to Holland, and are now moving out again.
If anything, one can assume that they are fleeing Dutch xenophobes rather than Muslim immigrants.
Third: A further 10% or so of the emigrants of 2006 were born Dutchmen emigrating to... non-Western countries. My guess is that those are also not fleeing that scary inflow of foreigners in Holland, then.
So, bottom line so far: Only about 40% of those 130,000 emigrants that Paul Belien touts are actually born Dutchmen moving to another Western country, and would thus at least potentially fit the storyline he suggests.
But that is not all. Because Belien makes two arguments. He says the emigrants are fleeing the influence of Muslim immigrants; but he also says that they are fleeing the "European welfare systems":
Quoting Paul Belien, au1929 wrote:Americans who think that the European welfare state is the model to follow would do well to ponder the question why, if Europe is so wonderful, Europeans are fleeing from it. European welfare systems are redistribution mechanisms, taking money from skilled and educated Europeans in order to give it to nonskilled newcomers from the Third World. [..]
Europe's welfare system is causing a perverse process of population replacement. If the Europeans want to save their culture, they will have to slay the welfare state.
But let us recap: one third of those who emigrated from Holland were people who were born in Third World countries, and are now mostly returning to their home country. Those are surely not fleeing the European welfare state. One tenth were native Dutch moving to non-Western countries. Also unlikely to be refugees from the welfare state. And a sixth were people from other Western countries, returning home. People who came to Holland for a few years to work or to study, and now go back.
That, again, leaves just 40% of the 2006 emigrants - those native Dutchmen moving to another Western country. Are they fleeing the Dutch welfare state, like Belien asserts? That brings us to,
Fourth: I dont know about 2006, but just one year before, more than half of the emigrants moved to... another European country.** From one welfare state to another!
Eg, 17% went to Belgium. 14% went to Germany. 9% went to the UK. 6% went to France. Another 6% went to Spain. (Thats
on top of the numbers who went back to their native Turkey, Surinam, Morocco or Aruba.)
If Belien's assertion that Dutch emigrants are fleeing Muslim immigrants and welfare systems were true, you'd expect to find great numbers of native Dutch emigrants moving to, well, countries without many of those pesky welfare state arrangements or Third World folks.
But it turns out that those numbers are not just not
great - they're marginal. All of
five percent of the Dutch emigrants of 2005 went to the US, and all of 3% to Australia. And those numbers include Americans and Australians who were living in Holland and returned home.
In short:
au1929 wrote:Paul Belien is a European writer. He is editor of The Brussels Journal and an adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute.
And he cant count.
(The Brussels Journal is a ragingly xenophobe outlet, by the way.)
* All data on proportions based on data from the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), see here and here.
** Source: Population trends, statistical quarterly of the CBS, 2006/4.