Posted on 12/10/2004 7:15:56 PM PST by aculeus
An exodus of native-born Dutch in search of a new life abroad has reversed immigration flows for the first time since the post-war era.
Last year more people left the Netherlands than arrived as migrants or asylum seekers, even though unemployment remains low at 4.7 percent and per capita income is higher than any major country in Europe.
Lawyers, accountants, computer specialist, nurses, and businessmen are lining up for visas to the English-speaking world, looking to Australia, New Zealand and Canada as orderly societies where people have the space to breathe.
The new wave of "middle-class flight" has quickened this year following rising ethnic violence and crime committed by and against immigrants, and in response to fears that social order is breaking down. In the first six months there was a net outflow of 13,313 people.
They are disengaging from a multicultural experiment once hailed as the model for the world but now stretched to breaking point. They are also escaping traffic jams and chronic over-crowding.
Requests for visa information have exploded since the murder of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch film-maker and acerbic critic of Muslim views on women.
An all-party report by the Dutch parliament this year concluded that the country's immigration policy had been a failure, leading to sink schools and ethnic ghettoes.
The Netherlands has been transformed in barely 30 years from a tight-knit Christian society into a polyethnic state, with three million people of immigrant background.
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"...rising ethnic violence and crime committed by and against immigrants..."
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Sure that violence against immigrant likely for no apparent reason is part of the middle class Dutch think of moving to Australia etc?
This article paints a rather bleak picture. Your thoughts?
So, they are fleeing Denmark to go to Britain and Canada? Are they aware of the immigration problems of those two countries?
Following the example of the Kosovo Serbs? Why the Dutch keep Milosevic in the Hague prison?
Model for the world my @#$....
The Netherlands, not Denmark
And the total population of the Nedarland? Is it as large as Dallas, Texas and surrounding communities?
/john
Why do we worry about tiny little countries like the Netherlands?
/john
Maybe because they have troops in Iraq right now? Or maybe because they have over a million Muslims, many of whom are quite radicalized and would love nothing more than to come over here and kill us. Or maybe because it appears that the population is finally getting fed up with its government's experiment with liberalism and will take a turn to the right on immigration policy and other issues. The Netherlands has always led change in Europe in the post WWII era. It was the first main proponent of European integration, and look what has followed. It was the first to allow gay civil unions, and now most of Europe is following suit, and the pattern continues for many other issues. What happens in the Netherlands is a good predictor for what is coming in Europe's future. I think those would all be good reasons pay attention to it.
Islam must die...we must eliminate it wherever it exists...
My knife skills instructor at culinary school was a nederlander. I'm not worried about the Islamofacists taking over, there. The pendulum is swinging the other way. A pop. of 16mil (pom) is very small in the scheme of things. And those guys are rough enough to survive. And they are finding the will.
It's all good.
/john
Jeez, can't imagine why their leaving. Couldn't possibly be that Islamists are over-running the country.
The Immigration is only one part of the problem. Ever since euthanasia hit the Netherlands, some of the older folks decided that they did not want to take their chances in the Dutch hospitals. Many of them go to Germany for treatment, depending on the condition, many stay there.
The Netherlands has a sound place in American history, serving as it did as a refuge for the persecuted French Hueguenots (Protestants) as well as Dutch Hueguenots, many of whom eventually came to America to settle Boston, New York, and Delaware.
Were it not for the Dutch, where would we have gotten people like Paul Revere, the Bowdoins (Bowden College), the Fanueils, and many others who founded America.
Cut and save this one -- then paste into an article about America a few years down the road. But where to run?
Shouldn't they be going to Cuba? The socialist island paradise?
Islam will "lose", for the same reason that all fascist governmental structures lose -- because it is against God's fundamantal law that men will live free.
With an immigrant population closing in on 25%, the pressures are bound to be felt throughout the society, it's no wonder they are fleeing; what makes us think we have a place to run?
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