They can’t do anything much about asylum applicants without violating quite a few fundamental international agreements. So not happening anytime soon.
Legal immigration they can easily play with. It won’t help them at all but it looks like this is what a sizeable portion of the population wants (Europe-wide trend of rising populist right).
My guess is that this will go on for some time until Dutch businesses finally press the government hard to reverse it.
> My guess is that this will go on for some time until Dutch businesses finally press the government hard to reverse it.
High value companies like ASML are already applying serious pressure to keep migrants coming.
Just looking at the "Akkoord op Hoofdlijnen" they struggled to get through already shows how terribly disfunctional this coalition is going to be. Half of the points are already impossible due to EU regulations. The other half already have both farmers and environmentallists angry.
Even if the coalition holds for a full term, it's not going to achieve much and likely quickly corrode voter confidence.
The current plans have around 50% voter support right now. (for voters of the parties involved) Which isn't too bad, but it'll likely only go down from here as more compromises are bound to happen.
I get people voting in protest, but the naivety of thinking populist PVV is going to get anything done is saddening. They've already shown in previous governments how innept they are at actually getting shit done. They would've been far better off voting for any of the other more sensible right leaning parties.
I agree but PVV voters and other anti-migrant right-wingers seem to think that companies like ASML are just being capitalistic and choose migrants over the Dutch in order to pay less and profit more. In their minds, if migrants were not there, things still would get done in the same way and Dutch employees would get paid much more. It is delusional but this is the viewpoint I saw them repeat many times. If the new government immediately yields to big businesses on immigration, then they lose all their credibility instantly. So I expect this will take some time, pain and lots of blame shifting.
I agree fully by the way. This government will be a shitshow and will probably not be able to make half of what they promised happen. My only worry is that PVV uses the narrative that their “more liberal” partners did not allow them to enact harsher anti-immigration policies and put the blame on them. They would probably try to persuade the voter base to give them even more power to go full anti-immigration next time. So, the rabbit hole can go even deeper with the almost certain failure of this cabinet.
The 30% ruling does provide an incentive for this, though, so it's not completely insane to think financial factors played a part. It does give the appearance of purposefully undercutting local wages.
Without the 30% ruling companies would have to offer much higher salaries or relocation packages. 30% ruling should be seen as a subsidy for companies not employees.
Moving here is expensive!
They definitely don't pay knowledge migrants less, its the skill set they have, the Dutch market simply doesn't have it. I worked in Automotive Engineering and was on a knowledge migrant visa.
In bigger companies there is no difference between salary brackets for HSM and locals. However, some companies take advantage of 30-percent ruling to pay lower gross salary. The employee happens to get the same net with his Dutch counterpart but his tax benefit is largely swallowed by their employer.
Yes it is a legal right and guaranteed by an international agreement. There is no way the NL can pull out of it unilaterally. The best they can do to is make the life hell for asylum seekers in detention centers but it would not change anything much.
Agreed. It's easier to mess around with the legal immigrants because the illegal ones don't play by the rules anyway.
It's like in school: it's easier to punish the students that usually play by the rules because they'll change their behaviour after the punishment, instead of punishing the troublemakers because it takes way more time and resources to get those to do what you want. And thus you create the illusion that something is being done, while the core problem is mostly ignored.
Because that worked so well for the UK after Brexit.... EU immigration down, hurting the economy, non-eu and illegal immigration way up. So many of the populist policies are the exact same bullshit we heard before the EU referendum. Dutch voters should just have a look next door to see what will happen.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BrexitMemes/s/XjINcPFQvL
Noone will look anywhere. The economy sucks, everything is expensive and there are no affordable houses. Average joe will just look at me and other migrants and will think “Well only if these guys were not here, I would get paid better and would be able to afford a place to live in”.
They know nothing of course but they cannot be reasoned with. I do really think that it is for the best that the NL experiences this first hand. Maybe they know something afterall that we are totally blind to see. We will live and see.
Only the European Court of Human Rights one would be. People really overestimate to how much refugees/asylum seekers are actually entitled.
The Geneva treaties and protocols, as well as the UN declarations on refugees, are far less generous than many people think. The only refugees, for example, that are entitled to lifelong asylum status are those who are personally persecuted for the beliefs, politics or inalienable characteristics, like political dissidents, religious minorities and critics. Refugees are not entitled to a roadmap to citizenship, are not entitled to get preferential treatment for housing or other necessities and amenities, etc .
War refugees are entitled to even less to the point that a tent camp at the border would qualify as adequate, even if it is cleared and the refugees sent home the moment the fighting stops.
Well the thing is that there are so many refugees and they are entitled to asylum application. This right cannot be denied under current agreements. During asylum application process, asylum seekers have to be hosted somewhere. This means that either you have to build huge concentration camps in the middle of Europe or you have to allow them in cities. The former is logistically very challenging and also not so good in term of humanitarian treatment of refugees.
One other way of handling this quickly can be to give verdict on asylum application in a matter of few days and reject almost all of them. However, this would mean the end of the independence of the judiciary and this is definitely not happening in a country like the NL where judges are independent.
Additionally, even sending back refugees whose applications are denied is usually very difficult and expensive.
It's tough to have principles that respect human rights. It's easy to blame all domestic problems on scary immigrants. This combination creates the Netherlands.
Yeah I am aware but they cannot fold to that demand (keeping or expanding 30-percent ruling) immediately since populists claim to be protecting locals against big business interests.
The NL is no longer a good place for new expats by the way. The tax benefit has once again been reduced and noone knows what the new populist government can do tomorrow. The naturalization duration will likely be extended to 10 years (While Germany is reducing it to 3) and the mild recession is still ongoing. Moreover, the climate has become considerably more hostile for migrants lately, especially after the election victory of PVV. The change is noticeable in this sub as well.
I am well established in the NL at this point (bought a house, the kid is in Dutch education etc) and I like this country. However, had it been as it is now when I first received an offer, I would have likely not moved here. The feeling of not being wanted by locals is quite strong now.
The populist government will ofc specifically target the groups that bother the demographic that voted for this government. So they will target muslims, because Wilders, his financiers and his voterbase hate muslims, expats and students because "they took our homes" and "the Netherlands first" are tried populist slogans proven to work and whatever the group the media portrays negatively.
They will not specifically target groups that cause trouble in "farawayistan" Ter Apel; heck - by scrapping the spreidingswet they ensure the troubles stay there and not near the homes of the people in the Hague.
They have to. If they would actually resolve the "issue" of non-existing mass immigration, they would lose their voter base entirely. Housing crisis wont be resolved by Wilders either, so the narrative we will see the next election would be something like:
"We tried everything within our power but the EU is preventing us from limiting immigration so we need to have a Nexit and take our country back again. Unlike the UK we will leave the Union but with our trade deals intact. This way we will be able to close out borders entirely and resolve the housing crisis which is being caused by immigrants."
The Hague with 57% of foreigners and only 43% of Dutch people is the same as most big cities, majority of population are foreigners. Same with Amsterdam and Rotterdam.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hague
Quite surprised me too - although I don't know how they calculate when you become Dutch if your parents are born abroad
Edit: you're classed as Dutch if both of your parents were born in NL
The statistics are about the birthplace of the parents. If both parents are born in the Netherlands, this person is of DUTCH BACKGROUND. If not, migration background.
It is NOT the classification of Dutch. You can be Dutch with migration background.
The source wikipedia used is this: https://opendata.cbs.nl/statline/#/CBS/nl/dataset/37713/table
But this is not about being Dutch, it's about migration background, that 57% is people who are 1st or 2nd generation immigrants, it doesn't say anything about citizenship.
It doesn't even say that much about anything. A colleague of mine had her firstborn in the USA, when she worked there for two years. Her child and grandchildren will now be classified as persons with a migration background.
In the “hoofdlijnenakkord” there’re 2 pages (pages 4 and 5) devoted to what they are going to to with the asylum situation with some explanation and specific bullet points.
Can you explain your point about “they won’t target the Ter Apel group”?
I'm not sure if the point of your comment is to simply shine light on the possibility that I may be an immigrant given my line of questioning (even though there is nowhere in my post where I explicitly mentioned that I am an one) or if there's something else I am missing but clearly, your premise about me "making the mistake of thinking they care" isn't even correct because my question automatically implies that they don't care. My question is WHY do they not care?
It is clear that you are a (legal) immigrant because of the way you formed your question. Ontopic: I meant that you are trying to make sense of something which is not sensible. Wilders that propagates “eigen volk eerst” (put our own people first) doesn’t discriminate too much between highly skilled legal immigrants or the asylum seekers from Africa.
To be honest, that's the "career politician playbook". It's not like previous governments offered any _real_ solutions to any of the problems. Heck, their "solutions" made most worse.
Also, far right loves straight up lying.
There aren't really many illegal immigrants in the Netherlands. You would really need to spend a lot of effort to find a handful. And when they are found, they get deported ASAP.
What most of the voters want is less immigrants from poor countries (i.e. "Muslims")
These "immigrants" are most often Dutch or European citizens and they can't be deported.
A smaller group are asylum seekers who are legal (until/unless their claim is denied) and they come into the EU through border countries like Italy. You can try to ask Italy to please keep them there, but Italians aren't really willing to be the Ter Apel for Europe.
I do expect a Rwanda like deal to eventually come around as a symbolic victory, but it won't make a big difference. People will still enter the EU and Rwanda is not big enough to absorb the volume that the EU or UK gets.
What remains are the highly skilled workers from non-EU countries and students.
So, expect the government to crack down on those, until the economic effect become too painful.
Yea sure, not like they made any progress on environmental issues like; carbon emissions, greenifying our energy infrastructure, giving more space for nature and water to deal with climate change, implement efforts to reduce (plastic) waste.
O wait..
And what has the right done? Bail out banks and business during economic downfall and COVID. Further tax advantages for the wealthy. Outsource more production to China. Allow business to speculate with the housing market, which greatly contributed to the housing shortage we're having right now. Shut down immigration centers cause "we don't need them anymore", despite experts predicting they would be needed again soon.
Sure it wasn't all bad what they did the last few governments. But most of problems they're promising to fix right now, are problems they caused themselves. And now people want to fix issues caused by right-leaning policies, by going even further towards the right. Please help me understand this logic?
The whole 'anti immigration as a whole' by rightwing politicians is peak virtue signaling, fiy.
The right does a lot more virtue signalling than the left.
Not really sure the right does anything more...most of the stuff is so outlandish that it in the end won't happen anyway. Remember the 130km/h on the motorway? Now it's "where possible" and turns out it's not possible anywhere.
Since this vote and the lean towards the far right has emerged I certainly have felt differently about the NL. Living here for 4 years, I’m from Ireland, Iv felt good about here, but all of a sudden with the idea of this is how the Dutch really feel about expats, immigrants, “people that are different”, I go about my daily life differently. Small interactions I see differently, attitudes I see in a different light.
Not greatly different, I mean a slight small feeling that makes you say “hmm” at the end of the day. I also know it’s not all Dutch people that voted this way but at the same time
I call them business savy... money doesn't stink. Not the same as tolerant... so many racially segregated neighborhoods even before the latest elections.
The “lean towards the far right” has been clearly visible ever since 2001. Wilders has also participated in the government before. This really hasn’t suddenly changed or become that much more serious.
It has however joined with another current, that of the people who are upset that the previous governments created a bunch of problems (e.g. farmers, housing, illegal immigration etc.etc.) with the appearance that they were unable to solve them because they play by the books of international treaties, conferences, EU-regulations etc.etc.
So these people vote for parties that promise to do something (read: the right-wing populist parties), and not for parties that just say “no you can’t do that” for every approach (which include the left-wing parties).
I lived in Dublin and Amsterdam and Dublin is worse. Croatian guy killed for speaking Croatian, East Wall protests, that Mongolian woman that was murdered, Brazilian Deliveroo drivers attacked / sometimes killed, city centre in flames with buses on fire, mushrooming tent cities and people trying to burn down asylum seeker centres.
I can’t think of anything I’ve seen in Amsterdam other than the ad campaign targeting British stag groups
That's Amsterdam though, an island of lefty multiculturalism. If you get out into the countryside you will see another side of Dutch opinions. I have family living in Limburg and they genuinely blame every problem on Muslims and black people, even though they live in the quaintest whitest village you can imagine and probably haven't seen an actual brown person since 1974. It's bizarre that the areas where the pvv has the most votes are the areas where immigration is more of an imagined threat than an every day reality...
Yeah but, like Amsterdam, Limburg is its own thing. I’ve found Limburgers to be much more closeted and inwardly focused than most Dutch people. Maybe a mixture of catholic culture and old resentments over the closure of the mines?
For example, people from Groningen, Drenthe and Friesland tend to be downright blunt and unwelcoming but they definitely aren’t as prejudiced towards foreigners as people might suspect.
I’m naming these provinces specifically, because these provinces (particularly those towns and villages that suffer from poverty and social issues) have for years been on the receiving end of failing government policies. One of which has been to financially incentivize poor communities to host refugee centers, leading to refugees being hosted away from the larger cities / rich communities while causing social tensions in already troubled communities.
The sentiment among people living in these towns (who overwelmingly voted PVV) therefore is one of broken promises and one of distrust in the ‘Western political elite’. Apart from some misguided youths and incels, you’ll be hard pressed to find common folk expressing racist sentiments or supporting nationalist policies.
The vote for the PVV is more of a “f*ck you” to the political elite, than anything else. Which btw also means that Wilders’ electoral victory in these regions might very well be short lived… Especially after killing the Spreidingswet.
LOL I've lived in Eindhoven for about 5 years, and a couple of times an otherwise very nice and friendly lady that worked at my barber explained to me in detail how basically all the problems affecting Noord Brabant were caused by foreigners working in the hi-tech industry in the area. She was a Baudet supporter, and seemed really convinced that we're all gay/liberal/transgender drug addicts, all claiming government benefits (perhaps she meant the 30% ruling, which I'll admit is unfair) and also all snapping up the available housing in the region. Also apparently it's our fault if "the Netherlands is at war now", which I am assuming is a Baudet talking point.
Of course she always concluded that she didn't mean me, obviously, but I had to admit a lot of "us" were like that.
Yeah, I tipped anyway. I know I shouldn't have.
I reckon Ireland would be having that lean in a politically meaningful way too if it wasn't for the fact that our nationalist politics are very much left-leaning, through Sinn Fein (and Irish nationalism is traditionally driven by something very different to nationalism in most of the global west).
And I think the root cause would be the exact same as the cause in the Netherlands: the housing crisis.
You know what? If they want us to leave we’ll leave. Sure, I spent my money on getting an education here in a field that is in high demand, but if you don’t want me to contribute to the economy, I’ll simply take my degree back to America.
Seems a bit backwards though no? I get a lucrative degree here and instead of contributing to the economy they’d rather I take my skills with me.
I think a lot of people are just easily swayed by simplistic populist arguments appealing to their sense of fairness. I don't agree with these arguments, but I think it is important to understand why they work. The reason why expats get a bad rep with some Dutch people is because they see it as unfair that they can come work here with a 30% tax reduction, while also taking up sorely needed housing. Add on top of that the fact that these expats rarely integrate into Dutch society e.g. don't learn Dutch and lead to a further anglification of the country e.g. servers in Amsterdam not speaking a word of Dutch. There are nuanced responses to this argument, but just calling people racist, or saying that they are scared of people who are different won't convince anyone. You can quickly see why they would come to the conclusion that they are being treated unfairly, because these arguments are intuitive and seem to make a lot sense at first glance.
>I’m from Ireland, Iv felt good about here, but all of a sudden with the idea of this is how the Dutch really feel about expats, immigrants, “people that are different”
Lol... you do know there were many anti immigration rallies in Dublin just few weeks ago and few stabbings just a couple of months ago.
The reason is not "immigration" per say but "uncontrolled immigration" and the locals are fedup of it. Irish emigrate the highest in the world yet ironically even they felt "its too much too quickly" and caused housing crisis etc.
Netherlands is LOT more popular than Ireland and attracts a LOT more immigrants/expats. You got to feel sorry for the Dutch as they cannot even afford to live in their own country, face massive housing crisis as foreigners are EVERYWHERE in Netherlands, barely any foreigner speaks Dutch and there is no space.
You reallyyyy don't think there is a reason why the Dutch are fed up of foreigners and want just less foreigners (regardless of skills). They want their country to be sustainable and only take as many people as sustainable and not get overrun to a point of no return.
What i have learned from these threads is that expats/immigrants are selfish and rarely think about dutch people and what they feel. Its all about "oh i feel insulted that's how dutch people think about ME", "I see Netherlands differently" etc. Its all me me me.
Again, its not about anti immigration, its about sustainable immigrants and ONLY taking in immigrants which are practically possible, not get overrun.
If the dutch don't take DRASTIC measures then they won't have a country left and you will emigrate again to "better" country but the dutch will have to live with the consequences and damage and rebuild their country
Of all the groups mentioned, what does a Highly Skilled Migrants have to do about this bu11sh1t happening? I mean this HSM went here to work for Christ sake! They're not here to cause chaos and they usually don't give a damn about conflicts and politics. Let them work, earn and live a peaceful life in NL
This attitude by the conservative Dutch and Wilders voters is one of the strangest things indeed. Literally everyone is coming to work. Not to set up a colonial pipelines.
But honestly the very presence of brown and black people is chaos to them I think. The comfort in conservative society is everyone looking like themselves.
>Incentives for Landlords
>Measures will be introduced to encourage landlords to rent out their properties by reducing regulations and possibly lowering tax burdens.
*Sigh*... The anti-solution that will create more issues.
Because they don't make the distinction between people who come here and contribute (some industries would collapse without highly skilled immigrants, like IT), and those who come here and become a drain in the economy, often hold incompatible values and/or become criminals.
Some don't make the distinction because it's not politically correct, some are utterly stupid.
They plan on targeting immigration in general. And illegal immigration is something that governments have been pretty bad at doing something about for ages. This is because of the (international) legal framework and is something that other European countries have also run into. Of course, the new government is promising to do something but that won't amount to much.
So, if they want to show any kind of results, they will have to target the kind of immigration they have some kind of control over, which is to say, legal immigration.
They want to target all migration. It was not addressed in the news article quoted. It were the current coalition parties that came up with the story that the worker migrants and foreign students are the main issue and not asylum seakers. The latter were called "a small percentage of the issue". It was not the new coalition that came up with these plans but the old coalition. The reason the old one lost a lot of votes, because they did not show any intention to do anything about illiegal migration or at least acknowledge the problem.
Also you cannot make rules against illegal things. You only have to enforce the current rules.
It is like making stealing more illegal, it will barely help
At the same time the propose an MP that is a former adminstor in the justice force, he will have attention for enforcing rules sure.
You vote for shit parties, you get a shit government. Illegal immigration is a boggy man they used to get in government. They aren't doing anything about it because it's not a big problem and it mostly benefits their friends the farmers.
ok I really want to know what you expect the average dutch person to think? it's becoming impossible to own a home due to demand out weighing supply, crime is on the rise, inflation is up, services are deteriorating, and immigrants are bringing their problems with them. (I'm sorry but Muslims are intolerant of any religion except their own deny it if you like but this is proven by their own words and actions). you expect them to shut up and ignore the problems? ofcourse immigration itself isn't responsible for every problem but the left start screaming rascist and shut down any debate on the topic. if we aren't allowed a voice to air our grieviences on the left then the only alternative is the right.
Housing shortage is due to bad government policies making it difficult and time consuming to build new houses. Inflation is global issue due to wars and wage increases. Majority of crime in NL is drug related and root cause is the port of Rotterdam (European entry point) not the people. The immigrants your complaining about bring the problems are also the only reasons big companies like ASML are still in NL and others make NL their European headquarters. You need the immigrants to fill the “skill gap” today and help prevent population decline (low birth rate). Without immigrants your hospitals, ports, factories would stop working.
That whole message wasn't about illegal immigrants, you circumvented everything it was said to something that wasn't even discussed. I would advise you to read it again.
enter march complete coordinated ten head spectacular cause muddle squealing
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
What baffles me is that among other things they will promote house sharing, but I don't see any measures taken against large landlords that own +10-20 houses/apartments
I wonder what kind of hypocrisy is suggesting that it's those immigrants who are causing this famous "housing crysis". Just before leaving the NL, the landlord I had rented his flat had bursted out that I was making a lot of money by working at those IT jobs with fancy salaries, while trying to justify himself on attempting to rip me off by my deposit. He was a boomer owning two flats, and it was again him who had let the place I left to another expat for a higher rent than what I was paying.
And then the expats are the problem, yeah right..
> ALL THE EXPATS WHO OVERPAY FOR RENT ARE DRIVING UP THE HOUSING COSTS!
I hear this party line spouted constantly with willful disregard for who is charging the insane amount for rent.
well, there would be a time for those voters when they'd face some regulating laws that would attempt to force them to reduce their rents by around 50%, if they manage to "get rid of" these immigrants, thanks to the same party with this statement. I bet the number of protestors would exceed by far that of the farmers then. The question is; would the Dutch landlords, who mostly consists of the elder supporting these statements, prioritize resolving the housing issue of their own young people over making profit out of their "investments" by giving up their own financial comfort? or would they be slapped by the fact that a house is a "basic need, which is called shelter" but not a financial investment at all, especially when your country is small and already over-populated by some reasons?
I find the 30% tax benefit unfair as being an expat who used it myself, and I'd fully support removing it. Yet targeting the skilled expats whom you invited to your lands for your own reasons while not bothering to bring solid solutions to illegal/non-qualified immigration and the problems it causes is just nothing but BS imo.
I hope the Dutch are smarter than buying this.
Timmermans: We can't get rid of the deductible on health insurance, that takes time.
Wilders: that woman needs the money now! She cannot wait!
Wilders, a year later: We'll be halving the deductible by 2027.
The party leader that was honest lost. The liar won, by telling the people what they wanted to hear: Happy Lies.
No politician will get popular by telling unpleasant truths.
There is very little illegal immigration here, it's incredibly hard to live here as an illegal.
Pretty much impossible to rent a place or work, can't open a bank account, you can't even get a phone number if you're illegal
Lol, keep living under a rock. There is a whole underground market for illegals for rentals (which often comes with trafficking and poor living conditions).
My understanding is that it's primarily legal but unskilled immigrants who really get screwed over (e.g., folks from Poland who get brought in to work agriculture and have their passports confiscated by their employers).
You are referring to primarily eastern Europeans, they aren't illegal as they are EU citizens, the housing being illegal rentals doesn't make them illegal in the country
Still there are very few illigals. The estimates are between 23 and 58 thousand.
https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2020/12/16/dalende-trend-zichtbaar-in-illegalenschattingen
I'm sorry but if you have family and shady connections you can get this with no problem at all. There is a bunq bank, that claim you can have your account in 5 minutes.
As a person who got that account, they shut the account down if you are not a legal resident within like 3 months.
It is also harder to do now than it was 2 years ago.
oh yes, I probably have an outdated view on this, from about 2-3 years ago. I had an interview there and had suspicions that it was strange and probably a money laundering tool
can confirm this doesn't work - when we arrived, was during the tail end of covid, so could not get a BSN number quickly. And you need one to use your bunq account.
I came here legally.
Bought my sim card when I arrived with my foreign credit card and no questions asked.
Everything else you mention however is correct.
Love the optimism but just not true. Need a cell number, get a prepaid Vodafone sim off the shelf literally anywhere. Use wise/bunq bank account. There are boat loads of sketchy landlords who don’t want you to register because they are also breaking the law.
You say "people with a sound mind". I say [https://brusselsenieuwe.nl/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/tweede-kamer-hoofdlijnenakkoord-e1715879559327-1280x500.jpeg](https://brusselsenieuwe.nl/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/tweede-kamer-hoofdlijnenakkoord-e1715879559327-1280x500.jpeg)
Because people are tribalistic - across the world. The say "our jobs", "our houses" and "no internationals", but really, they mean: "we prioritize our comfort to that of other kinds because we can". In the Netherlands, it looks especially weird to outsiders because the high living standard has made people spoiled, so the things they complain about look minor to foreigners. I still don't understand what crisis of cost of living people are talking about. Do they mean "I'm not upper-middle class with an average job?"
It's not even about race or nationality, like everyone claims - people from the same country also get pissed when their city gets a lot of internal migration, and some even look down on said people. Your best bet is not to explain yourself, but to be assertive and say - your pension will be 700 euro without immigrants like me.
Which place? There's enough places if you can pay. I think there's too much social housing (which we, the people who don't use it, have to subsidize) and people feel a sense of entitlement that they should have one if their income is low or average.
That's what I'm talking about - thinking that having a family or being born here gives you a pass to be prioritized over e.g. a young man from abroad. Also, it's not like foreigners pay less. It's usually more and no, I don't get any tax exemption because I came as a student. The Netherlands got me almost for free while it had to pay 12 years of school and 3 years of Bachelor's for Dutch people at work.
Firstly, the waiting lists for social housing are extremely long. Secondly, social housing (especially older buildings) in the Netherlands isn’t actually subsidised, but only rent-controlled and non-profit. Thirdly, the birth rate in the Netherlands is plummeting simply because young couples cannot afford a suitable house to start a family.
It boggles my mind, especially since there’s such a labour shortage at the moment. More than ever NL needs skilled migrants. (And with skilled I mean “willing to serve plates in a restaurant”). All this xenophobia is going to hurt the economy in ways that benefit no one, except for the politicians who use it to get voted in.
> And with skilled I mean “willing to serve plates in a restaurant”
We don't need them, we need employers to pay fairly. If you pay a fair and decent wage, people will pick up the jobs that they initially refused. Nobody is going to work their ass off for minimum pay if they can make the same money working at Albert Heijn stocking the shelves.
Sure, the unemployment rate might be 3.6%, but don't forget that UWV also forced a lot of the unemployed to register as ZZP'er not so long ago, which skewed the numbers a lot.
Unemployment isn't the issue here, the issue is that even for students, some jobs pay atrocious because there's always a Romanian or Polish worker that does it for half the money. Which means that your average Dutch person doesn't want to do the job because it pays dogshit and the average "shady" business owner doesn't want to hire Dutch people because they know their rights.
Dutch people would never do this types of jobs anyway haha And also is funny you blame the migrants, when in reality you should maybe see the person that is underpaying them? Regardless of nationality, the government should crack on the "shady" business owners and give rights and decent pay to whoever is working, expat or local. That would level the playfield. But asking that from this government is too much and honestly I think this status quo favors their hateful agenda.
> you blame the migrants
Maybe don't rub your eyes after you wiped your ass, you're seeing shit that isn't there.
> Dutch people would never do this types of jobs anyway
Pay them enough and they will, if they get paid the same as the cheap east european workforce they rather take bullshit jobs.
Before these guys were in the playing field, students and young people would work in the agro industry and in some cases were able to grow and make a career out of it. Nowadays the pay doesn't even cover their expensive room rent, whereas the eastern europeans get lured in with cheap housing (which they have to share with 5 others)
> Regardless of nationality, the government should crack on the "shady" business owners and give rights and decent pay to whoever is working, expat or local.
Yes, but that's not going to happen as long as those "cheap" expats are around.
They're basically at a stalemate, if they keep allowing foreign labour to move in to the country, a lot of jobs will remain filled by low-paid expats, if they block them from entering the country and taking up jobs, people will start complaining about that not being fair to the foreigners. I can understand the government choosing "their own" for once.
Take away the source of low-cost labour and companies have to adjust or risk going bankrupt.
But you are blaming them...you literally said that...I really can't sometimes with you lot.
Your opinion will not be changed so I will just leave this conversation saying that the issue seems to be the greedy business man and the government. Locals and expats are just a victim of it. Fairness should be for everyone, regardless of nationality, and that should be worldwide not only in this country.
The only ones from Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and other sources of our expats that I'm blaming for this are the job agencies in those countries promising the workers loads of money and housing. They operate together with the people in the Netherlands that hire them and pay them pennies.
If the government takes away that possibility/scam by making it harder on expats to do menial jobs the Dutch people can also do, that would bring in more jobs for the Dutch.
Schengen isn't that bad, it's the companies that abuse it and govermnents don't seem to be able to stop it. The last resort is to make it harder for foreign workers to come in.
Will that stop things? Probably not, because most of those guys (and by those guys I mean the job agencies) are being paid under the table anyway and a good part of their employees are not even registered, but at least now it opens up another option to fine/control them.
Again, I don't blame the people that come here to work, but the only reason they can come to the country is because right now those agencies have free reign.
If you take away the biggest source of low-income (under the official minimum) jobs, the employers **have** to hire "expensive" locals.
Or better still, if the government enforced a stricter rule on minimum paying jobs and all these scummy businesses hiring immigrants for pennies, then anyone could be paid fairly, and it would be up to skill and experience not up to being local/migrant. Just my opinion.
I guess you mean to draw a distinction, not between Legal and illegal, but between Skilled expats and unskilled refugees.
There is indeed a massive difference between how those groups impact the society. But voters of populist governments don’t appreciate such nuances.
I think they absolutely do. But the issue is that the unskilled migrants and asylium seakers come here either illegally - so you cant do much about it because they function outside the law already - or under international laws that you can't do much about (like asylium seekers and / or deportation)
So it's just easier to target legal migration, when you need to show that you're doing something.
I like how people assume your premise is valid.. The "hoofdlijnen akkoord" says:
Mensen zonder een geldige verblijfstitel zo veel mogelijk, ook gedwongen, uitzetten.
This means they will start deporting illegal immigrants..
They also have a point about increasing the border patrol between Germany and Belgium and turning away people without valid documents..
If you want to know more maybe read the thing and don't make us do it for you.
I'm only going based of the article I linked to my post. I'm not Dutch, so clearly my knowledge is lacking with regards to the specifics here but there's not one mention of any plan to curtail illegal immigration/asylum grants/etc but a lot of points about making temporary legal immigration and naturalization harder.
> Mensen zonder een geldige verblijfstitel zo veel mogelijk, ook gedwongen, uitzetten.
But this is already the case and always has been.
The issue is, it's barely possible. If they don't have documents, they may be illegal but you're unable to deport them. If reciving country does not cooperate, you can't deport them. If they are a wanted criminal in country we deem will treat them wrong (inhumane punishment), we can't deport them. None of this will change because it's the international or eu law.
Which is already laughably counterproductive, as the refugee convention already gives the rights for refugees to ask for asylum on any border check points, so the checks just make lives for refugees easier - with unwanted side effects of picking up refugees who were not even planning to go to the Netherlands in the first place. The only people who will be bothered by this are just people who left their passport at home.
And the illegal migrants who have already decided to cross the border illegally would simply then use the thousands of local roads that cross the border. It's nowhere near the deserted border of US-Mexico, they can just hop off the local bus in Belgium and continue with Dutch local buses or trains after pleasant 30-minute walk in the countryside.
To make the border checks actually work we need to go back to the 60s when there were border checks with Belgium, even then it will still just be a point of application for refugees.
Many points in the accord were basically current rules and policies that people didn't even knew that existed tho. B1 for naturalisation or ban on double nationality is a good example, which are already decided and put into law - just dumb voters assume that it wasn't. The government already has its own agency that specifically works on deportation, and believe me they aren't just sitting on their desks playing minesweepers all day.
>Can someone explain why the govt is aggressively planning on targetting legal immigration while doing diddly squat about illegal immigration from problematic countries?
Illegal immigration is tiny numbers
>Surely, such broad stroke decisions can't be coming from people with a sound mind right?
No, they're fascist lunatics. You were aware of that right? The biggest party promises ethnic cleansing.
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweede_zaak-Geert_Wilders
He sayd "do you want more or less morriccans" (ethnic group that lives in the Netherlands for generations)
People shouted "less, less , less"
And Wilders then says "I will make that happen"
E.g. he promised to purposefully reduce an existing ethnic group.
If someone base all its politics based on hate you can’t expect reasonable actions from them.
Stop separating yourself from other immigrant groups. We are all just humans and no one is safe from bigots.
Yes. So let's call them "illegal overstayers" or something like that. It's not illegal to migrate.
Let's remember that The Netherlands has a long history of colonialism, slavery and exploitation of other countries' wealth. It is too simple to call NL a victim.
Actually, no.
Many genuine refugees do not have "papers".
Do you think North Korea or Iran offer passports to people who are fleeing their governments? FFS
North Korean deflectors usually don't travel to the Netherlands but go to neighbouring countries that don't turn them over to the NK Government.
And we're not talking about papers like passports, this concerns things like a visa. Even Iran will tell you as a Dutch person to get the fuck out if you don't have a visa.
Go to the neighbouring country or the closest country with a Dutch embassy, tell them what's going on and based on your story you'll get either a visa or they can start the asylum process from there.
FFS
Taking the emotion out of it, it's really about the numbers. The Tories were elected on a platform of reducing migration. Legal migrants are by far the largest group with illegal numbers being relatively small.
funny isn't it. some new laws target the expat community and now everyone here is talking about deporting illegals back to their 'problematic' countries.
I dont think people on this sub are so progressive as they like to pretend
You got it right, just because they got a visa they think they deserve to benefit from what this country can offer but the rest aren’t as good and they don’t deserve the right to have safe and decent living. This is the biggest problem, Big cities natives think new comers from other towns don’t deserve to be here and new comers think legal migrants shouldn’t be here and all the above are against the least fortunate which is the ones that risked their lives crossing the sea or being starved
Yeah it’s a classic case of pulling up the ladder after making it oneself. It’s a super capitalist response to the world. Looking out only for oneself as the “good integrated loyal immigrant who’s unlike the others who look like me.” Tragic cause it pits us all against each other and breaks fraternity.
I honestly think countries founded on neoliberalism and hyper individualism are incapable of being truly progressive. There may be interpersonal niceties and civility, but as a system most are okay with systemic oppression.
I am assuming - again assuming, because I don't think anyone in current goverment said it straight - that they are referring to trends like the ones shown in the statistics Denmark first released and is now acting on: [https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/the-effects-of-immigration-in-denmark](https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/the-effects-of-immigration-in-denmark)
If so, the "problematic" countries would mean the so-called MENAPT group, which stands for Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey. Immigrants from those groups are disproportionally represented in Danish crime statistics.
Germany has similar trends, but because of - lets call it "historical sensitivities" - they are less likely to put any more specific background on the stats beyond "migrant"
[https://civilek.info/en/2024/04/10/alarming-migrant-criminals-the-number-of-criminal-acts-in-the-non-metropolitan-area-is-at-an-eight-year-record-level/](https://civilek.info/en/2024/04/10/alarming-migrant-criminals-the-number-of-criminal-acts-in-the-non-metropolitan-area-is-at-an-eight-year-record-level/)
Just like African Americans are disproportionately represented in US crime?
I wonder if the reason is socio-economic rather than have anything to do with race, nationality or culture...
Then why are the immigrants from MENA not getting educated? Isn't education free? Race will get you their ethnicity and the ethnicity will give you their culture.. nationality is what ever. People have multiple passports now a days, and still don't feel English, Dutch or Swedish. They feel like their ethnic background and their values. Very few immigrants from MENA feel like a dutchman or swede. They feel muslim first, moroccan second and then it ends there. It's the culture that matters! Their values!
The crazy part is, you are saying that poor people commit crime because they are poor. Are there no poor people who are law abiding citizens? And why are they not committing crime? Good values? Good upbringing? Good parents? Good education? You don't need money for that.
I feel the need to point out that illegal immigration and asylum numbers are much lower than work migration and inner European migration in the Netherlands. If I remember correctly, Asylum seekers last year was about 40k while Skilled Migration is like 150k.
I am assuming - again assuming, because I don't think anyone in current goverment said it straight - that they are referring to trends like the ones shown in the statistics Denmark first released and is now acting on: [https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/the-effects-of-immigration-in-denmark](https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/the-effects-of-immigration-in-denmark)
If so, the "problematic" countries would mean the so-called MENAPT group, which stands for Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey. Immigrants from those groups are disproportionally represented in Danish crime statistics.
Germany has similar trends, but because of - lets call it "historical sensitivities" - they are less likely to put any more specific background on the stats beyond "migrant"
[https://civilek.info/en/2024/04/10/alarming-migrant-criminals-the-number-of-criminal-acts-in-the-non-metropolitan-area-is-at-an-eight-year-record-level/](https://civilek.info/en/2024/04/10/alarming-migrant-criminals-the-number-of-criminal-acts-in-the-non-metropolitan-area-is-at-an-eight-year-record-level/)
Well, but you're still the ones complaining about the church bells, complaining that you bough a 800k house, and that 120k a year is not enough money. Nevertheless, I'm not trying to attack Americans here. My point and question was on, what are problematic countries. Because any country can be problematic if they push too much of their culture into the country where they move into.
Oh for sure. I will not deny those Americans giving the rest of us a bad name, bragging about their tax benefits.
I just wish you all would own the wappies jerking off to American rednecks who are buying the pickup trucks.
I do believe that by raising the requirement for legal immigration and putting the anti-immigrant sentiment out there, would stop a lot of skilled and resourceful people from choosing NL as their new home. When people have a choice, people would consider this kind of things. So what they are trying might work in reducing the statistics of immigration in the coming years.
The discussion used to be about legal immigrants from dangerous places. The rules were quite light and there were statistically quite many "bad apples". The group causing issues at and around AZC's was between 9% to 11% per location in 2022. In my neigboring town with a AZC of around 700 people that means about 70 of them could be "trouble". From local inside info I know it's a little lower and on average we have 50 people causing issues. Those things include fighting with other asylum seekers (and sometimes pulling a knife) and theft from local stores. One store even went out of business. The local police department grew from 8 to 14 people purely to be able to deal with those people. So locally people in the town are very much against THAT specific group and want to have that addressed. With the current rules though there is basically nothing the police and the local authorities can do. Even if somehow the group of bad apples is removed, with current screening or rather, the lack there of everyone knows new ones will come. Something needs to happen in either screening of new arrivals or Authorities need to get better rules and tools to deal with those bad apples.
Somehow the issue I describe got lumped together with something completely different and reporters trick people into responding about "Immigrants" knowing full well that locals will talk about the issue I described and maybe in combination with illegal immigration but on the news they'll bring it like OP did here and bunch it all together with what I'm writing below.
The new issue they drew into the conversation is the housing crisis and knowledge migrants of in general, migrants that are not fleeing a bad situation and people that just want to live/move here. These people don't go through the same immigration route as asylum seekers.
As you can see from the issues experienced in my town its that asylum route which has issues and undesired results in some cases. The other group of immigrants isn't connected to those issues.
Additionaly, here in my region we do have a tight housing market but it's nowhere near as bad as in the western part of the country or Tilburg where most (non-asylum) immigrants seem to go to. So when talking about "immigrants" here basically no one is thinking about that group nor the housing crisis. On top of that we are not yet experiencing lack of spots for students at reasonably local universities and high schools yet.
Immigrants of any sorts are usually well percieved here and no one I know of thinks "no one allowed".
It's just that if you point out that roughly 10% at the AZC and how we can address that you are shoved in the "far right wing" and "immigrant hating" corner and a normal talk is no longer possible.
To get out of that situation I think we should first seperate those 2 issues (or 3 actually, 1 problematic asylum seekers/asylum procedures, 2: housing crisis, 3: learning institutes) Each has vastly different issues that need to be treated in vastly different ways.
When it comes down to immigration the reasons 2 and 3 are not "Immigration" issues per se. Immigrants just suffer from the side effects just as the natives do. Give the house / spot to a person and that means another person won't get it. That's just the way it works in our overcrowded little country. Just a question of continence, who do you chose to NOT give a new home?. Or who will you chose to NOT be able to follow a education that year? And what will you say to them?
It is mostly just talks, the expectations are most points will be brought to court which will tell them they cant do it. There has been a lot of news how the "rechtelijke macht" is complaining that the "wetgevende macht" en de "uitvoerende macht" is losing sight of trias politica. (that is the three pillars support eachother and make the netherlands and democracy works).
their thought behind it is as simple as when you clean your computer storage. no, cannot delete this, also not that, proceed with whatever there is to delete.
Everyone will always target the 'soft targets'. Yes, it would be better to go against the illegal immigration, but that is also many magnitudes harder to achieve
What exactly can you do about illegal immigration? But you can certainly do something about legal immigration. A nasty right wing policy but a large number of people (ignorant or otherwise) voted for the PVV. Don't let anyone tell you that you need a large amount of immigration to not be like Japan with an aging population and no one but robots to care for you in your old age. No one will tell the truth as it is not 'popular'
The word 'illegal' is a bit wide here, yes it is illegal if there is no reason but actually it is completely legal if immigrants are fleeing war, so as long as they support wars, there will be more ssylum seekers.
But yes, for the average dutch, reducing the number of foreigners in general will give them the illusion that the Netherlands is back to them and that's what the current government promises
The Dutch government (and the EU) have actually done a ton over recent years to curb illegal immigration. The deals they cut are often pretty shady, so it’s not promoted that much outside of people in the know.
In short, the Dutch government pays off sketchy governments to stem the flow of migrants coming from the streams in which the migrants are most likely to not be legitimate migrants. Again, it is very tricky because unless and until an individual evaluation is done, we really don’t and can’t know whether someone individually has a legitimate asylum ground. However, the EU and NL target migrant streams most likely to be non-legit and pay off countries outside of the EU to stop those streams. The fact that the migrant streams went through those countries in the first place kind of shows that those countries were not very well organized in the first place and that bribes of officials were happening by smugglers. So yeah, rich countries ‘bribe’ (legal bribes though) those officials instead to stop the migrant flows and hope that the police and justice officials don’t just keep taking bribes from both sides. *shrug*
In terms of deportation, that is also very difficult. The first step is proving where someone is actually from, which can take a long time considering language barriers, lack of documents, fraud, delays, etc. Then NL has to convince that country to actually take that person back. China has 1,4 million people living there already. Do you think taking people who left their country back into their country is at all a priority for them? There are also legitimate costs associated with relocation, so those countries are going to ask for money as well. Oh, and do you think various authoritarian countries treat these people who leave their glorious utopias well? Let’s not even start down that rabbit whole.
So yeah, a lot has been done, but it’s not always promoted because most voters don’t want to know in too much detail what the actual consequences of their actions are when they demand their governments to “do something” about illegal immigration.
Immigrants, legal or illegal, has been made a scapegoat.
Although the 30% tax ruling is a bit unfair I think using immigrants as scapegoat is a path we should stay far off.
Looking through asml and other big companies (they are locomotives of Dutch economy) distribution of workers, expats are doing a heavy lifting for the economy. So I would say the opposite that it is currently even not enough lure for highly skilled migrants.
On top of what is already said, immigration is the current boogey man. They don't want to solve it. This problem gives them soany voters! Why solve your money maker? No, they want to pretend they are solving it without acrually solving it.
Because it is easy to do that. As simple as that.
Solving the refugee issue requires a lot of hard work, thinking and patience.
NL as a country need knowledge and work related migrant to survive, they just don't have enough people who either have the skills or are willing to do the tough and boring jobs.
Remember no real politician will ever try to solve a real problem.
I am Italian and I have already seen all of this happening.
The main problem in NL is not caused by asylum seekers, but with some second or third generation dutch guys.
However the government will not do anything about it. They will go after legal immigration, eventually forcing someone to illegality, and they cause more problems so that the far right can speculate upon it.
If a populist solve a problem they might be forced to change their politics and propaganda and start again from the beginning. They don't want it.
Because illegal immigrants barely cost our country money, if any at all, while providing us with labour. They are a labourforce operating below market prices in sectors that no-one wants to work in, without rights to healthcare, social security, housing- or any other kind of human rights in fear of being deported.. Basically modern slavery.
Milton friedman already outlined this strategy at the time of the Reagan administration, and it has been practiced ever since.
Source: am Social scientist
Oh well, I guess ASML will have to go somewhere else. And any other large multinational.
PVV voters will be happy, they won't have to deal with those stinking foreigners.
How do you think illegal immigrants from problematic countries reach us? Think they come here by boat? Swimming? Probably that's why we pay the EU to do better border control
Who says they are not doing anything about illegal immigration? This appears to be a paper dealing with the situation of legal immigrants. Why conflate the two?
They can’t do anything much about asylum applicants without violating quite a few fundamental international agreements. So not happening anytime soon. Legal immigration they can easily play with. It won’t help them at all but it looks like this is what a sizeable portion of the population wants (Europe-wide trend of rising populist right). My guess is that this will go on for some time until Dutch businesses finally press the government hard to reverse it.
> My guess is that this will go on for some time until Dutch businesses finally press the government hard to reverse it. High value companies like ASML are already applying serious pressure to keep migrants coming. Just looking at the "Akkoord op Hoofdlijnen" they struggled to get through already shows how terribly disfunctional this coalition is going to be. Half of the points are already impossible due to EU regulations. The other half already have both farmers and environmentallists angry. Even if the coalition holds for a full term, it's not going to achieve much and likely quickly corrode voter confidence. The current plans have around 50% voter support right now. (for voters of the parties involved) Which isn't too bad, but it'll likely only go down from here as more compromises are bound to happen. I get people voting in protest, but the naivety of thinking populist PVV is going to get anything done is saddening. They've already shown in previous governments how innept they are at actually getting shit done. They would've been far better off voting for any of the other more sensible right leaning parties.
I agree but PVV voters and other anti-migrant right-wingers seem to think that companies like ASML are just being capitalistic and choose migrants over the Dutch in order to pay less and profit more. In their minds, if migrants were not there, things still would get done in the same way and Dutch employees would get paid much more. It is delusional but this is the viewpoint I saw them repeat many times. If the new government immediately yields to big businesses on immigration, then they lose all their credibility instantly. So I expect this will take some time, pain and lots of blame shifting. I agree fully by the way. This government will be a shitshow and will probably not be able to make half of what they promised happen. My only worry is that PVV uses the narrative that their “more liberal” partners did not allow them to enact harsher anti-immigration policies and put the blame on them. They would probably try to persuade the voter base to give them even more power to go full anti-immigration next time. So, the rabbit hole can go even deeper with the almost certain failure of this cabinet.
The 30% ruling does provide an incentive for this, though, so it's not completely insane to think financial factors played a part. It does give the appearance of purposefully undercutting local wages.
Without the 30% ruling companies would have to offer much higher salaries or relocation packages. 30% ruling should be seen as a subsidy for companies not employees. Moving here is expensive!
They definitely don't pay knowledge migrants less, its the skill set they have, the Dutch market simply doesn't have it. I worked in Automotive Engineering and was on a knowledge migrant visa.
In bigger companies there is no difference between salary brackets for HSM and locals. However, some companies take advantage of 30-percent ruling to pay lower gross salary. The employee happens to get the same net with his Dutch counterpart but his tax benefit is largely swallowed by their employer.
I thought applying for asylum is legal
Yes it is a legal right and guaranteed by an international agreement. There is no way the NL can pull out of it unilaterally. The best they can do to is make the life hell for asylum seekers in detention centers but it would not change anything much.
Agreed. It's easier to mess around with the legal immigrants because the illegal ones don't play by the rules anyway. It's like in school: it's easier to punish the students that usually play by the rules because they'll change their behaviour after the punishment, instead of punishing the troublemakers because it takes way more time and resources to get those to do what you want. And thus you create the illusion that something is being done, while the core problem is mostly ignored.
Yeah, they tried once to make me stay an entire friday afternoon for skipping classes. Guess which afternoon I also skipped.
Because that worked so well for the UK after Brexit.... EU immigration down, hurting the economy, non-eu and illegal immigration way up. So many of the populist policies are the exact same bullshit we heard before the EU referendum. Dutch voters should just have a look next door to see what will happen. https://www.reddit.com/r/BrexitMemes/s/XjINcPFQvL
Noone will look anywhere. The economy sucks, everything is expensive and there are no affordable houses. Average joe will just look at me and other migrants and will think “Well only if these guys were not here, I would get paid better and would be able to afford a place to live in”. They know nothing of course but they cannot be reasoned with. I do really think that it is for the best that the NL experiences this first hand. Maybe they know something afterall that we are totally blind to see. We will live and see.
Only the European Court of Human Rights one would be. People really overestimate to how much refugees/asylum seekers are actually entitled. The Geneva treaties and protocols, as well as the UN declarations on refugees, are far less generous than many people think. The only refugees, for example, that are entitled to lifelong asylum status are those who are personally persecuted for the beliefs, politics or inalienable characteristics, like political dissidents, religious minorities and critics. Refugees are not entitled to a roadmap to citizenship, are not entitled to get preferential treatment for housing or other necessities and amenities, etc . War refugees are entitled to even less to the point that a tent camp at the border would qualify as adequate, even if it is cleared and the refugees sent home the moment the fighting stops.
Well the thing is that there are so many refugees and they are entitled to asylum application. This right cannot be denied under current agreements. During asylum application process, asylum seekers have to be hosted somewhere. This means that either you have to build huge concentration camps in the middle of Europe or you have to allow them in cities. The former is logistically very challenging and also not so good in term of humanitarian treatment of refugees. One other way of handling this quickly can be to give verdict on asylum application in a matter of few days and reject almost all of them. However, this would mean the end of the independence of the judiciary and this is definitely not happening in a country like the NL where judges are independent. Additionally, even sending back refugees whose applications are denied is usually very difficult and expensive.
It's tough to have principles that respect human rights. It's easy to blame all domestic problems on scary immigrants. This combination creates the Netherlands.
ASML is already hitting back at the reversing of laws to keep the Netherlands a good option for skilled expats. Like the tax laws and such.
Yeah I am aware but they cannot fold to that demand (keeping or expanding 30-percent ruling) immediately since populists claim to be protecting locals against big business interests. The NL is no longer a good place for new expats by the way. The tax benefit has once again been reduced and noone knows what the new populist government can do tomorrow. The naturalization duration will likely be extended to 10 years (While Germany is reducing it to 3) and the mild recession is still ongoing. Moreover, the climate has become considerably more hostile for migrants lately, especially after the election victory of PVV. The change is noticeable in this sub as well. I am well established in the NL at this point (bought a house, the kid is in Dutch education etc) and I like this country. However, had it been as it is now when I first received an offer, I would have likely not moved here. The feeling of not being wanted by locals is quite strong now.
The populist government will ofc specifically target the groups that bother the demographic that voted for this government. So they will target muslims, because Wilders, his financiers and his voterbase hate muslims, expats and students because "they took our homes" and "the Netherlands first" are tried populist slogans proven to work and whatever the group the media portrays negatively. They will not specifically target groups that cause trouble in "farawayistan" Ter Apel; heck - by scrapping the spreidingswet they ensure the troubles stay there and not near the homes of the people in the Hague.
PVV voters don’t necessarily live in The Hague
They have to. If they would actually resolve the "issue" of non-existing mass immigration, they would lose their voter base entirely. Housing crisis wont be resolved by Wilders either, so the narrative we will see the next election would be something like: "We tried everything within our power but the EU is preventing us from limiting immigration so we need to have a Nexit and take our country back again. Unlike the UK we will leave the Union but with our trade deals intact. This way we will be able to close out borders entirely and resolve the housing crisis which is being caused by immigrants."
The Hague with 57% of foreigners and only 43% of Dutch people is the same as most big cities, majority of population are foreigners. Same with Amsterdam and Rotterdam.
The majority is still Dutch but has a migration background.
Cool comment, where's your source?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hague Quite surprised me too - although I don't know how they calculate when you become Dutch if your parents are born abroad Edit: you're classed as Dutch if both of your parents were born in NL
The statistics are about the birthplace of the parents. If both parents are born in the Netherlands, this person is of DUTCH BACKGROUND. If not, migration background. It is NOT the classification of Dutch. You can be Dutch with migration background.
The source wikipedia used is this: https://opendata.cbs.nl/statline/#/CBS/nl/dataset/37713/table But this is not about being Dutch, it's about migration background, that 57% is people who are 1st or 2nd generation immigrants, it doesn't say anything about citizenship.
It doesn't even say that much about anything. A colleague of mine had her firstborn in the USA, when she worked there for two years. Her child and grandchildren will now be classified as persons with a migration background.
Well thats a pretty high standard.
Also the former Dutch East Indies.
Yep. And notice that exactly those groups are the ones the government wants to deal with.
In the “hoofdlijnenakkord” there’re 2 pages (pages 4 and 5) devoted to what they are going to to with the asylum situation with some explanation and specific bullet points. Can you explain your point about “they won’t target the Ter Apel group”?
Because you make the mistake to think they care about the legality as you probably do because you are a legal immigrant.
I'm not sure if the point of your comment is to simply shine light on the possibility that I may be an immigrant given my line of questioning (even though there is nowhere in my post where I explicitly mentioned that I am an one) or if there's something else I am missing but clearly, your premise about me "making the mistake of thinking they care" isn't even correct because my question automatically implies that they don't care. My question is WHY do they not care?
It is clear that you are a (legal) immigrant because of the way you formed your question. Ontopic: I meant that you are trying to make sense of something which is not sensible. Wilders that propagates “eigen volk eerst” (put our own people first) doesn’t discriminate too much between highly skilled legal immigrants or the asylum seekers from Africa.
Simple solutions to difficult problems - it's the playbook of the far right.
To be honest, that's the "career politician playbook". It's not like previous governments offered any _real_ solutions to any of the problems. Heck, their "solutions" made most worse.
"Neither the right-wing nor the far-right-wing have real solutions to my problems with foreigners :(" isn't a very compelling point imo.
is the playbook of politics, not the far right exclusively
"we've tried the right and the far right and none of my problems have been solved, therefore all politics is poison".
Also, far right loves straight up lying. There aren't really many illegal immigrants in the Netherlands. You would really need to spend a lot of effort to find a handful. And when they are found, they get deported ASAP. What most of the voters want is less immigrants from poor countries (i.e. "Muslims") These "immigrants" are most often Dutch or European citizens and they can't be deported. A smaller group are asylum seekers who are legal (until/unless their claim is denied) and they come into the EU through border countries like Italy. You can try to ask Italy to please keep them there, but Italians aren't really willing to be the Ter Apel for Europe. I do expect a Rwanda like deal to eventually come around as a symbolic victory, but it won't make a big difference. People will still enter the EU and Rwanda is not big enough to absorb the volume that the EU or UK gets. What remains are the highly skilled workers from non-EU countries and students. So, expect the government to crack down on those, until the economic effect become too painful.
True but the left does nothing but virtue signal
Yea sure, not like they made any progress on environmental issues like; carbon emissions, greenifying our energy infrastructure, giving more space for nature and water to deal with climate change, implement efforts to reduce (plastic) waste. O wait.. And what has the right done? Bail out banks and business during economic downfall and COVID. Further tax advantages for the wealthy. Outsource more production to China. Allow business to speculate with the housing market, which greatly contributed to the housing shortage we're having right now. Shut down immigration centers cause "we don't need them anymore", despite experts predicting they would be needed again soon. Sure it wasn't all bad what they did the last few governments. But most of problems they're promising to fix right now, are problems they caused themselves. And now people want to fix issues caused by right-leaning policies, by going even further towards the right. Please help me understand this logic?
The whole 'anti immigration as a whole' by rightwing politicians is peak virtue signaling, fiy. The right does a lot more virtue signalling than the left.
Not really sure the right does anything more...most of the stuff is so outlandish that it in the end won't happen anyway. Remember the 130km/h on the motorway? Now it's "where possible" and turns out it's not possible anywhere.
Since this vote and the lean towards the far right has emerged I certainly have felt differently about the NL. Living here for 4 years, I’m from Ireland, Iv felt good about here, but all of a sudden with the idea of this is how the Dutch really feel about expats, immigrants, “people that are different”, I go about my daily life differently. Small interactions I see differently, attitudes I see in a different light. Not greatly different, I mean a slight small feeling that makes you say “hmm” at the end of the day. I also know it’s not all Dutch people that voted this way but at the same time
When I moved to NL an expat friend of mine who’d lived here for a decade gave me some sage advice. The Dutch are tolerant, but not accepting.
I call them business savy... money doesn't stink. Not the same as tolerant... so many racially segregated neighborhoods even before the latest elections.
The “lean towards the far right” has been clearly visible ever since 2001. Wilders has also participated in the government before. This really hasn’t suddenly changed or become that much more serious. It has however joined with another current, that of the people who are upset that the previous governments created a bunch of problems (e.g. farmers, housing, illegal immigration etc.etc.) with the appearance that they were unable to solve them because they play by the books of international treaties, conferences, EU-regulations etc.etc. So these people vote for parties that promise to do something (read: the right-wing populist parties), and not for parties that just say “no you can’t do that” for every approach (which include the left-wing parties).
I lived in Dublin and Amsterdam and Dublin is worse. Croatian guy killed for speaking Croatian, East Wall protests, that Mongolian woman that was murdered, Brazilian Deliveroo drivers attacked / sometimes killed, city centre in flames with buses on fire, mushrooming tent cities and people trying to burn down asylum seeker centres. I can’t think of anything I’ve seen in Amsterdam other than the ad campaign targeting British stag groups
That's Amsterdam though, an island of lefty multiculturalism. If you get out into the countryside you will see another side of Dutch opinions. I have family living in Limburg and they genuinely blame every problem on Muslims and black people, even though they live in the quaintest whitest village you can imagine and probably haven't seen an actual brown person since 1974. It's bizarre that the areas where the pvv has the most votes are the areas where immigration is more of an imagined threat than an every day reality...
Yeah but, like Amsterdam, Limburg is its own thing. I’ve found Limburgers to be much more closeted and inwardly focused than most Dutch people. Maybe a mixture of catholic culture and old resentments over the closure of the mines? For example, people from Groningen, Drenthe and Friesland tend to be downright blunt and unwelcoming but they definitely aren’t as prejudiced towards foreigners as people might suspect. I’m naming these provinces specifically, because these provinces (particularly those towns and villages that suffer from poverty and social issues) have for years been on the receiving end of failing government policies. One of which has been to financially incentivize poor communities to host refugee centers, leading to refugees being hosted away from the larger cities / rich communities while causing social tensions in already troubled communities. The sentiment among people living in these towns (who overwelmingly voted PVV) therefore is one of broken promises and one of distrust in the ‘Western political elite’. Apart from some misguided youths and incels, you’ll be hard pressed to find common folk expressing racist sentiments or supporting nationalist policies. The vote for the PVV is more of a “f*ck you” to the political elite, than anything else. Which btw also means that Wilders’ electoral victory in these regions might very well be short lived… Especially after killing the Spreidingswet.
LOL I've lived in Eindhoven for about 5 years, and a couple of times an otherwise very nice and friendly lady that worked at my barber explained to me in detail how basically all the problems affecting Noord Brabant were caused by foreigners working in the hi-tech industry in the area. She was a Baudet supporter, and seemed really convinced that we're all gay/liberal/transgender drug addicts, all claiming government benefits (perhaps she meant the 30% ruling, which I'll admit is unfair) and also all snapping up the available housing in the region. Also apparently it's our fault if "the Netherlands is at war now", which I am assuming is a Baudet talking point. Of course she always concluded that she didn't mean me, obviously, but I had to admit a lot of "us" were like that. Yeah, I tipped anyway. I know I shouldn't have.
You shouldn’t tip either way over here. Just pay what you are owed (except in horeca establishments)
Tipping is not expected at the hair dresser/barber here. It is truly only for amazing service/hair cuts.
People want to protect their safe communities from becoming what they see on the news
I reckon Ireland would be having that lean in a politically meaningful way too if it wasn't for the fact that our nationalist politics are very much left-leaning, through Sinn Fein (and Irish nationalism is traditionally driven by something very different to nationalism in most of the global west). And I think the root cause would be the exact same as the cause in the Netherlands: the housing crisis.
You know what? If they want us to leave we’ll leave. Sure, I spent my money on getting an education here in a field that is in high demand, but if you don’t want me to contribute to the economy, I’ll simply take my degree back to America. Seems a bit backwards though no? I get a lucrative degree here and instead of contributing to the economy they’d rather I take my skills with me.
I think a lot of people are just easily swayed by simplistic populist arguments appealing to their sense of fairness. I don't agree with these arguments, but I think it is important to understand why they work. The reason why expats get a bad rep with some Dutch people is because they see it as unfair that they can come work here with a 30% tax reduction, while also taking up sorely needed housing. Add on top of that the fact that these expats rarely integrate into Dutch society e.g. don't learn Dutch and lead to a further anglification of the country e.g. servers in Amsterdam not speaking a word of Dutch. There are nuanced responses to this argument, but just calling people racist, or saying that they are scared of people who are different won't convince anyone. You can quickly see why they would come to the conclusion that they are being treated unfairly, because these arguments are intuitive and seem to make a lot sense at first glance.
>I’m from Ireland, Iv felt good about here, but all of a sudden with the idea of this is how the Dutch really feel about expats, immigrants, “people that are different” Lol... you do know there were many anti immigration rallies in Dublin just few weeks ago and few stabbings just a couple of months ago. The reason is not "immigration" per say but "uncontrolled immigration" and the locals are fedup of it. Irish emigrate the highest in the world yet ironically even they felt "its too much too quickly" and caused housing crisis etc. Netherlands is LOT more popular than Ireland and attracts a LOT more immigrants/expats. You got to feel sorry for the Dutch as they cannot even afford to live in their own country, face massive housing crisis as foreigners are EVERYWHERE in Netherlands, barely any foreigner speaks Dutch and there is no space. You reallyyyy don't think there is a reason why the Dutch are fed up of foreigners and want just less foreigners (regardless of skills). They want their country to be sustainable and only take as many people as sustainable and not get overrun to a point of no return. What i have learned from these threads is that expats/immigrants are selfish and rarely think about dutch people and what they feel. Its all about "oh i feel insulted that's how dutch people think about ME", "I see Netherlands differently" etc. Its all me me me. Again, its not about anti immigration, its about sustainable immigrants and ONLY taking in immigrants which are practically possible, not get overrun. If the dutch don't take DRASTIC measures then they won't have a country left and you will emigrate again to "better" country but the dutch will have to live with the consequences and damage and rebuild their country
Of all the groups mentioned, what does a Highly Skilled Migrants have to do about this bu11sh1t happening? I mean this HSM went here to work for Christ sake! They're not here to cause chaos and they usually don't give a damn about conflicts and politics. Let them work, earn and live a peaceful life in NL
This attitude by the conservative Dutch and Wilders voters is one of the strangest things indeed. Literally everyone is coming to work. Not to set up a colonial pipelines. But honestly the very presence of brown and black people is chaos to them I think. The comfort in conservative society is everyone looking like themselves.
I'm white but I will be swept up in the anti-immigration mania all the same.
Yeah, while the primary targets/triggers are PoCs, everyone working here will be axed alongside. It’s a rogue wave and it will affect everyone.
Because the people currently in charge do not really distinguish between legal and illegal. To them, foreign is foreign and they don't like that.
>Incentives for Landlords >Measures will be introduced to encourage landlords to rent out their properties by reducing regulations and possibly lowering tax burdens. *Sigh*... The anti-solution that will create more issues.
Because they don't make the distinction between people who come here and contribute (some industries would collapse without highly skilled immigrants, like IT), and those who come here and become a drain in the economy, often hold incompatible values and/or become criminals. Some don't make the distinction because it's not politically correct, some are utterly stupid.
They plan on targeting immigration in general. And illegal immigration is something that governments have been pretty bad at doing something about for ages. This is because of the (international) legal framework and is something that other European countries have also run into. Of course, the new government is promising to do something but that won't amount to much. So, if they want to show any kind of results, they will have to target the kind of immigration they have some kind of control over, which is to say, legal immigration.
They want to target all migration. It was not addressed in the news article quoted. It were the current coalition parties that came up with the story that the worker migrants and foreign students are the main issue and not asylum seakers. The latter were called "a small percentage of the issue". It was not the new coalition that came up with these plans but the old coalition. The reason the old one lost a lot of votes, because they did not show any intention to do anything about illiegal migration or at least acknowledge the problem.
genuine question, isn't that may turn them into illegal immigrants, doing work in the shadows, and living under a roof that's not registered, etc.. ?
Also you cannot make rules against illegal things. You only have to enforce the current rules. It is like making stealing more illegal, it will barely help At the same time the propose an MP that is a former adminstor in the justice force, he will have attention for enforcing rules sure.
You vote for shit parties, you get a shit government. Illegal immigration is a boggy man they used to get in government. They aren't doing anything about it because it's not a big problem and it mostly benefits their friends the farmers.
If there's one thing Dutch it's boggy men.
ok I really want to know what you expect the average dutch person to think? it's becoming impossible to own a home due to demand out weighing supply, crime is on the rise, inflation is up, services are deteriorating, and immigrants are bringing their problems with them. (I'm sorry but Muslims are intolerant of any religion except their own deny it if you like but this is proven by their own words and actions). you expect them to shut up and ignore the problems? ofcourse immigration itself isn't responsible for every problem but the left start screaming rascist and shut down any debate on the topic. if we aren't allowed a voice to air our grieviences on the left then the only alternative is the right.
Housing shortage is due to bad government policies making it difficult and time consuming to build new houses. Inflation is global issue due to wars and wage increases. Majority of crime in NL is drug related and root cause is the port of Rotterdam (European entry point) not the people. The immigrants your complaining about bring the problems are also the only reasons big companies like ASML are still in NL and others make NL their European headquarters. You need the immigrants to fill the “skill gap” today and help prevent population decline (low birth rate). Without immigrants your hospitals, ports, factories would stop working.
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That whole message wasn't about illegal immigrants, you circumvented everything it was said to something that wasn't even discussed. I would advise you to read it again.
enter march complete coordinated ten head spectacular cause muddle squealing *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
What baffles me is that among other things they will promote house sharing, but I don't see any measures taken against large landlords that own +10-20 houses/apartments
I wonder what kind of hypocrisy is suggesting that it's those immigrants who are causing this famous "housing crysis". Just before leaving the NL, the landlord I had rented his flat had bursted out that I was making a lot of money by working at those IT jobs with fancy salaries, while trying to justify himself on attempting to rip me off by my deposit. He was a boomer owning two flats, and it was again him who had let the place I left to another expat for a higher rent than what I was paying. And then the expats are the problem, yeah right..
> ALL THE EXPATS WHO OVERPAY FOR RENT ARE DRIVING UP THE HOUSING COSTS! I hear this party line spouted constantly with willful disregard for who is charging the insane amount for rent.
well, there would be a time for those voters when they'd face some regulating laws that would attempt to force them to reduce their rents by around 50%, if they manage to "get rid of" these immigrants, thanks to the same party with this statement. I bet the number of protestors would exceed by far that of the farmers then. The question is; would the Dutch landlords, who mostly consists of the elder supporting these statements, prioritize resolving the housing issue of their own young people over making profit out of their "investments" by giving up their own financial comfort? or would they be slapped by the fact that a house is a "basic need, which is called shelter" but not a financial investment at all, especially when your country is small and already over-populated by some reasons? I find the 30% tax benefit unfair as being an expat who used it myself, and I'd fully support removing it. Yet targeting the skilled expats whom you invited to your lands for your own reasons while not bothering to bring solid solutions to illegal/non-qualified immigration and the problems it causes is just nothing but BS imo. I hope the Dutch are smarter than buying this.
Because our seasonal farmers are dependant on illegal immigration. They love semi slaves.
>Surely, such broad stroke decisions can't be coming from people with a sound mind right? Who says that chosen politicians have to be of sound mind?
Timmermans: We can't get rid of the deductible on health insurance, that takes time. Wilders: that woman needs the money now! She cannot wait! Wilders, a year later: We'll be halving the deductible by 2027. The party leader that was honest lost. The liar won, by telling the people what they wanted to hear: Happy Lies. No politician will get popular by telling unpleasant truths.
There is very little illegal immigration here, it's incredibly hard to live here as an illegal. Pretty much impossible to rent a place or work, can't open a bank account, you can't even get a phone number if you're illegal
Lol, keep living under a rock. There is a whole underground market for illegals for rentals (which often comes with trafficking and poor living conditions).
My understanding is that it's primarily legal but unskilled immigrants who really get screwed over (e.g., folks from Poland who get brought in to work agriculture and have their passports confiscated by their employers).
You are referring to primarily eastern Europeans, they aren't illegal as they are EU citizens, the housing being illegal rentals doesn't make them illegal in the country
Still there are very few illigals. The estimates are between 23 and 58 thousand. https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2020/12/16/dalende-trend-zichtbaar-in-illegalenschattingen
I'm sorry but if you have family and shady connections you can get this with no problem at all. There is a bunq bank, that claim you can have your account in 5 minutes.
As a person who got that account, they shut the account down if you are not a legal resident within like 3 months. It is also harder to do now than it was 2 years ago.
oh yes, I probably have an outdated view on this, from about 2-3 years ago. I had an interview there and had suspicions that it was strange and probably a money laundering tool
The Bunq 5 min bank account works by scanning your ID and residence permit if you need one. If you need one and don’t have one, it doesn’t work.
can confirm this doesn't work - when we arrived, was during the tail end of covid, so could not get a BSN number quickly. And you need one to use your bunq account.
They will likely not do that but deal in cash
No one will play with cash if you have crypto, honey
I came here legally. Bought my sim card when I arrived with my foreign credit card and no questions asked. Everything else you mention however is correct.
Yeah, don’t need to be legal to get a sim. Can just walk to Albert Heijn and buy one.
Love the optimism but just not true. Need a cell number, get a prepaid Vodafone sim off the shelf literally anywhere. Use wise/bunq bank account. There are boat loads of sketchy landlords who don’t want you to register because they are also breaking the law.
You say "people with a sound mind". I say [https://brusselsenieuwe.nl/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/tweede-kamer-hoofdlijnenakkoord-e1715879559327-1280x500.jpeg](https://brusselsenieuwe.nl/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/tweede-kamer-hoofdlijnenakkoord-e1715879559327-1280x500.jpeg)
To think that that Scooby gang is in charge of one of the richest most progressive countries in the world
Because people are tribalistic - across the world. The say "our jobs", "our houses" and "no internationals", but really, they mean: "we prioritize our comfort to that of other kinds because we can". In the Netherlands, it looks especially weird to outsiders because the high living standard has made people spoiled, so the things they complain about look minor to foreigners. I still don't understand what crisis of cost of living people are talking about. Do they mean "I'm not upper-middle class with an average job?" It's not even about race or nationality, like everyone claims - people from the same country also get pissed when their city gets a lot of internal migration, and some even look down on said people. Your best bet is not to explain yourself, but to be assertive and say - your pension will be 700 euro without immigrants like me.
Surely the fact that a place to live is not available for thousands of young people who want to start a family hasn’t passed you by?
Which place? There's enough places if you can pay. I think there's too much social housing (which we, the people who don't use it, have to subsidize) and people feel a sense of entitlement that they should have one if their income is low or average. That's what I'm talking about - thinking that having a family or being born here gives you a pass to be prioritized over e.g. a young man from abroad. Also, it's not like foreigners pay less. It's usually more and no, I don't get any tax exemption because I came as a student. The Netherlands got me almost for free while it had to pay 12 years of school and 3 years of Bachelor's for Dutch people at work.
Firstly, the waiting lists for social housing are extremely long. Secondly, social housing (especially older buildings) in the Netherlands isn’t actually subsidised, but only rent-controlled and non-profit. Thirdly, the birth rate in the Netherlands is plummeting simply because young couples cannot afford a suitable house to start a family.
Rent-controlled and non-profit, so which is the charity organization donating money to build and maintain everything without a profit?
Woningcorporaties. They get 99% of their funding from rental incomes.
Non-profit doesn’t mean a charity or run by donations. It just means that rent payments are reinvested rather than being used to pay dividends.
With “if you can pay” you have found the cost of living crisis. Surely that is not too far fetched?
It boggles my mind, especially since there’s such a labour shortage at the moment. More than ever NL needs skilled migrants. (And with skilled I mean “willing to serve plates in a restaurant”). All this xenophobia is going to hurt the economy in ways that benefit no one, except for the politicians who use it to get voted in.
> And with skilled I mean “willing to serve plates in a restaurant” We don't need them, we need employers to pay fairly. If you pay a fair and decent wage, people will pick up the jobs that they initially refused. Nobody is going to work their ass off for minimum pay if they can make the same money working at Albert Heijn stocking the shelves.
The unemployment rate is 3.6%, where are those magical skilled employees going to come from?
Sure, the unemployment rate might be 3.6%, but don't forget that UWV also forced a lot of the unemployed to register as ZZP'er not so long ago, which skewed the numbers a lot. Unemployment isn't the issue here, the issue is that even for students, some jobs pay atrocious because there's always a Romanian or Polish worker that does it for half the money. Which means that your average Dutch person doesn't want to do the job because it pays dogshit and the average "shady" business owner doesn't want to hire Dutch people because they know their rights.
Dutch people would never do this types of jobs anyway haha And also is funny you blame the migrants, when in reality you should maybe see the person that is underpaying them? Regardless of nationality, the government should crack on the "shady" business owners and give rights and decent pay to whoever is working, expat or local. That would level the playfield. But asking that from this government is too much and honestly I think this status quo favors their hateful agenda.
> you blame the migrants Maybe don't rub your eyes after you wiped your ass, you're seeing shit that isn't there. > Dutch people would never do this types of jobs anyway Pay them enough and they will, if they get paid the same as the cheap east european workforce they rather take bullshit jobs. Before these guys were in the playing field, students and young people would work in the agro industry and in some cases were able to grow and make a career out of it. Nowadays the pay doesn't even cover their expensive room rent, whereas the eastern europeans get lured in with cheap housing (which they have to share with 5 others) > Regardless of nationality, the government should crack on the "shady" business owners and give rights and decent pay to whoever is working, expat or local. Yes, but that's not going to happen as long as those "cheap" expats are around. They're basically at a stalemate, if they keep allowing foreign labour to move in to the country, a lot of jobs will remain filled by low-paid expats, if they block them from entering the country and taking up jobs, people will start complaining about that not being fair to the foreigners. I can understand the government choosing "their own" for once. Take away the source of low-cost labour and companies have to adjust or risk going bankrupt.
But you are blaming them...you literally said that...I really can't sometimes with you lot. Your opinion will not be changed so I will just leave this conversation saying that the issue seems to be the greedy business man and the government. Locals and expats are just a victim of it. Fairness should be for everyone, regardless of nationality, and that should be worldwide not only in this country.
The only ones from Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and other sources of our expats that I'm blaming for this are the job agencies in those countries promising the workers loads of money and housing. They operate together with the people in the Netherlands that hire them and pay them pennies. If the government takes away that possibility/scam by making it harder on expats to do menial jobs the Dutch people can also do, that would bring in more jobs for the Dutch. Schengen isn't that bad, it's the companies that abuse it and govermnents don't seem to be able to stop it. The last resort is to make it harder for foreign workers to come in. Will that stop things? Probably not, because most of those guys (and by those guys I mean the job agencies) are being paid under the table anyway and a good part of their employees are not even registered, but at least now it opens up another option to fine/control them. Again, I don't blame the people that come here to work, but the only reason they can come to the country is because right now those agencies have free reign. If you take away the biggest source of low-income (under the official minimum) jobs, the employers **have** to hire "expensive" locals.
Or better still, if the government enforced a stricter rule on minimum paying jobs and all these scummy businesses hiring immigrants for pennies, then anyone could be paid fairly, and it would be up to skill and experience not up to being local/migrant. Just my opinion.
I guess you mean to draw a distinction, not between Legal and illegal, but between Skilled expats and unskilled refugees. There is indeed a massive difference between how those groups impact the society. But voters of populist governments don’t appreciate such nuances.
I think they absolutely do. But the issue is that the unskilled migrants and asylium seakers come here either illegally - so you cant do much about it because they function outside the law already - or under international laws that you can't do much about (like asylium seekers and / or deportation) So it's just easier to target legal migration, when you need to show that you're doing something.
You make a solid point. Thank you.
I like how people assume your premise is valid.. The "hoofdlijnen akkoord" says: Mensen zonder een geldige verblijfstitel zo veel mogelijk, ook gedwongen, uitzetten. This means they will start deporting illegal immigrants.. They also have a point about increasing the border patrol between Germany and Belgium and turning away people without valid documents.. If you want to know more maybe read the thing and don't make us do it for you.
I'm only going based of the article I linked to my post. I'm not Dutch, so clearly my knowledge is lacking with regards to the specifics here but there's not one mention of any plan to curtail illegal immigration/asylum grants/etc but a lot of points about making temporary legal immigration and naturalization harder.
> Mensen zonder een geldige verblijfstitel zo veel mogelijk, ook gedwongen, uitzetten. But this is already the case and always has been. The issue is, it's barely possible. If they don't have documents, they may be illegal but you're unable to deport them. If reciving country does not cooperate, you can't deport them. If they are a wanted criminal in country we deem will treat them wrong (inhumane punishment), we can't deport them. None of this will change because it's the international or eu law.
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The Marechaussee does regularly check passports on those trains.
Which is already laughably counterproductive, as the refugee convention already gives the rights for refugees to ask for asylum on any border check points, so the checks just make lives for refugees easier - with unwanted side effects of picking up refugees who were not even planning to go to the Netherlands in the first place. The only people who will be bothered by this are just people who left their passport at home. And the illegal migrants who have already decided to cross the border illegally would simply then use the thousands of local roads that cross the border. It's nowhere near the deserted border of US-Mexico, they can just hop off the local bus in Belgium and continue with Dutch local buses or trains after pleasant 30-minute walk in the countryside. To make the border checks actually work we need to go back to the 60s when there were border checks with Belgium, even then it will still just be a point of application for refugees.
Many points in the accord were basically current rules and policies that people didn't even knew that existed tho. B1 for naturalisation or ban on double nationality is a good example, which are already decided and put into law - just dumb voters assume that it wasn't. The government already has its own agency that specifically works on deportation, and believe me they aren't just sitting on their desks playing minesweepers all day.
>Can someone explain why the govt is aggressively planning on targetting legal immigration while doing diddly squat about illegal immigration from problematic countries? Illegal immigration is tiny numbers >Surely, such broad stroke decisions can't be coming from people with a sound mind right? No, they're fascist lunatics. You were aware of that right? The biggest party promises ethnic cleansing.
Can you provide a source of said ethnic cleansing?
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweede_zaak-Geert_Wilders He sayd "do you want more or less morriccans" (ethnic group that lives in the Netherlands for generations) People shouted "less, less , less" And Wilders then says "I will make that happen" E.g. he promised to purposefully reduce an existing ethnic group.
If someone base all its politics based on hate you can’t expect reasonable actions from them. Stop separating yourself from other immigrant groups. We are all just humans and no one is safe from bigots.
Claiming asylum is not illegal
Staying after you've been denied asylum is
Yes. So let's call them "illegal overstayers" or something like that. It's not illegal to migrate. Let's remember that The Netherlands has a long history of colonialism, slavery and exploitation of other countries' wealth. It is too simple to call NL a victim.
> It's not illegal to migrate It is when you don't have the right papers
Actually, no. Many genuine refugees do not have "papers". Do you think North Korea or Iran offer passports to people who are fleeing their governments? FFS
North Korean deflectors usually don't travel to the Netherlands but go to neighbouring countries that don't turn them over to the NK Government. And we're not talking about papers like passports, this concerns things like a visa. Even Iran will tell you as a Dutch person to get the fuck out if you don't have a visa.
And how exactly would someone with no passport obtain a visa? FFS
Go to the neighbouring country or the closest country with a Dutch embassy, tell them what's going on and based on your story you'll get either a visa or they can start the asylum process from there. FFS
Taking the emotion out of it, it's really about the numbers. The Tories were elected on a platform of reducing migration. Legal migrants are by far the largest group with illegal numbers being relatively small.
What are 'problematic countries'...? Is that just a racist dog whistle?
funny isn't it. some new laws target the expat community and now everyone here is talking about deporting illegals back to their 'problematic' countries. I dont think people on this sub are so progressive as they like to pretend
You got it right, just because they got a visa they think they deserve to benefit from what this country can offer but the rest aren’t as good and they don’t deserve the right to have safe and decent living. This is the biggest problem, Big cities natives think new comers from other towns don’t deserve to be here and new comers think legal migrants shouldn’t be here and all the above are against the least fortunate which is the ones that risked their lives crossing the sea or being starved
Yeah it’s a classic case of pulling up the ladder after making it oneself. It’s a super capitalist response to the world. Looking out only for oneself as the “good integrated loyal immigrant who’s unlike the others who look like me.” Tragic cause it pits us all against each other and breaks fraternity.
I honestly think countries founded on neoliberalism and hyper individualism are incapable of being truly progressive. There may be interpersonal niceties and civility, but as a system most are okay with systemic oppression.
I am assuming - again assuming, because I don't think anyone in current goverment said it straight - that they are referring to trends like the ones shown in the statistics Denmark first released and is now acting on: [https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/the-effects-of-immigration-in-denmark](https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/the-effects-of-immigration-in-denmark) If so, the "problematic" countries would mean the so-called MENAPT group, which stands for Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey. Immigrants from those groups are disproportionally represented in Danish crime statistics. Germany has similar trends, but because of - lets call it "historical sensitivities" - they are less likely to put any more specific background on the stats beyond "migrant" [https://civilek.info/en/2024/04/10/alarming-migrant-criminals-the-number-of-criminal-acts-in-the-non-metropolitan-area-is-at-an-eight-year-record-level/](https://civilek.info/en/2024/04/10/alarming-migrant-criminals-the-number-of-criminal-acts-in-the-non-metropolitan-area-is-at-an-eight-year-record-level/)
Just like African Americans are disproportionately represented in US crime? I wonder if the reason is socio-economic rather than have anything to do with race, nationality or culture...
Then why are the immigrants from MENA not getting educated? Isn't education free? Race will get you their ethnicity and the ethnicity will give you their culture.. nationality is what ever. People have multiple passports now a days, and still don't feel English, Dutch or Swedish. They feel like their ethnic background and their values. Very few immigrants from MENA feel like a dutchman or swede. They feel muslim first, moroccan second and then it ends there. It's the culture that matters! Their values! The crazy part is, you are saying that poor people commit crime because they are poor. Are there no poor people who are law abiding citizens? And why are they not committing crime? Good values? Good upbringing? Good parents? Good education? You don't need money for that.
Do people in power ever have a sound mind ? I think they should all be in prison for crimes against humanity .
I feel the need to point out that illegal immigration and asylum numbers are much lower than work migration and inner European migration in the Netherlands. If I remember correctly, Asylum seekers last year was about 40k while Skilled Migration is like 150k.
What are problematic countries? The Americans complaining about church bells or driving their massive cars through tiny streets?
I am assuming - again assuming, because I don't think anyone in current goverment said it straight - that they are referring to trends like the ones shown in the statistics Denmark first released and is now acting on: [https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/the-effects-of-immigration-in-denmark](https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/the-effects-of-immigration-in-denmark) If so, the "problematic" countries would mean the so-called MENAPT group, which stands for Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey. Immigrants from those groups are disproportionally represented in Danish crime statistics. Germany has similar trends, but because of - lets call it "historical sensitivities" - they are less likely to put any more specific background on the stats beyond "migrant" [https://civilek.info/en/2024/04/10/alarming-migrant-criminals-the-number-of-criminal-acts-in-the-non-metropolitan-area-is-at-an-eight-year-record-level/](https://civilek.info/en/2024/04/10/alarming-migrant-criminals-the-number-of-criminal-acts-in-the-non-metropolitan-area-is-at-an-eight-year-record-level/)
I'm not going to bite but lets not pretend that there isn't an issue here
Us Americans are not the ones with the pickup trucks around here.
Well, but you're still the ones complaining about the church bells, complaining that you bough a 800k house, and that 120k a year is not enough money. Nevertheless, I'm not trying to attack Americans here. My point and question was on, what are problematic countries. Because any country can be problematic if they push too much of their culture into the country where they move into.
Oh for sure. I will not deny those Americans giving the rest of us a bad name, bragging about their tax benefits. I just wish you all would own the wappies jerking off to American rednecks who are buying the pickup trucks.
Asylum seeking is NOT illegal. Hence it is not illegal immigration. So your question doesn’t make sense.
I do believe that by raising the requirement for legal immigration and putting the anti-immigrant sentiment out there, would stop a lot of skilled and resourceful people from choosing NL as their new home. When people have a choice, people would consider this kind of things. So what they are trying might work in reducing the statistics of immigration in the coming years.
Its already illegal, at best they can put more people on it. Legal immigration has a lot of ways to get more money out of it for the government
The discussion used to be about legal immigrants from dangerous places. The rules were quite light and there were statistically quite many "bad apples". The group causing issues at and around AZC's was between 9% to 11% per location in 2022. In my neigboring town with a AZC of around 700 people that means about 70 of them could be "trouble". From local inside info I know it's a little lower and on average we have 50 people causing issues. Those things include fighting with other asylum seekers (and sometimes pulling a knife) and theft from local stores. One store even went out of business. The local police department grew from 8 to 14 people purely to be able to deal with those people. So locally people in the town are very much against THAT specific group and want to have that addressed. With the current rules though there is basically nothing the police and the local authorities can do. Even if somehow the group of bad apples is removed, with current screening or rather, the lack there of everyone knows new ones will come. Something needs to happen in either screening of new arrivals or Authorities need to get better rules and tools to deal with those bad apples. Somehow the issue I describe got lumped together with something completely different and reporters trick people into responding about "Immigrants" knowing full well that locals will talk about the issue I described and maybe in combination with illegal immigration but on the news they'll bring it like OP did here and bunch it all together with what I'm writing below. The new issue they drew into the conversation is the housing crisis and knowledge migrants of in general, migrants that are not fleeing a bad situation and people that just want to live/move here. These people don't go through the same immigration route as asylum seekers. As you can see from the issues experienced in my town its that asylum route which has issues and undesired results in some cases. The other group of immigrants isn't connected to those issues. Additionaly, here in my region we do have a tight housing market but it's nowhere near as bad as in the western part of the country or Tilburg where most (non-asylum) immigrants seem to go to. So when talking about "immigrants" here basically no one is thinking about that group nor the housing crisis. On top of that we are not yet experiencing lack of spots for students at reasonably local universities and high schools yet. Immigrants of any sorts are usually well percieved here and no one I know of thinks "no one allowed". It's just that if you point out that roughly 10% at the AZC and how we can address that you are shoved in the "far right wing" and "immigrant hating" corner and a normal talk is no longer possible. To get out of that situation I think we should first seperate those 2 issues (or 3 actually, 1 problematic asylum seekers/asylum procedures, 2: housing crisis, 3: learning institutes) Each has vastly different issues that need to be treated in vastly different ways. When it comes down to immigration the reasons 2 and 3 are not "Immigration" issues per se. Immigrants just suffer from the side effects just as the natives do. Give the house / spot to a person and that means another person won't get it. That's just the way it works in our overcrowded little country. Just a question of continence, who do you chose to NOT give a new home?. Or who will you chose to NOT be able to follow a education that year? And what will you say to them?
It is mostly just talks, the expectations are most points will be brought to court which will tell them they cant do it. There has been a lot of news how the "rechtelijke macht" is complaining that the "wetgevende macht" en de "uitvoerende macht" is losing sight of trias politica. (that is the three pillars support eachother and make the netherlands and democracy works).
their thought behind it is as simple as when you clean your computer storage. no, cannot delete this, also not that, proceed with whatever there is to delete.
You think they aren't?
“Sound mind” , “populist” , “ extreme right”. And then people complain about polarization, what a shocker.
Everyone will always target the 'soft targets'. Yes, it would be better to go against the illegal immigration, but that is also many magnitudes harder to achieve
because it's easier to target people who are easy to target.
Humans make dumb decisions, that's why.
What exactly can you do about illegal immigration? But you can certainly do something about legal immigration. A nasty right wing policy but a large number of people (ignorant or otherwise) voted for the PVV. Don't let anyone tell you that you need a large amount of immigration to not be like Japan with an aging population and no one but robots to care for you in your old age. No one will tell the truth as it is not 'popular'
Moet je aan Geertje vragen. Ik weet het antwoord: NL heeft mensen nodig die het vieze werk doen voor weinig geld.
LOL, these measures are like… first guess ideas literally anyone who doesn’t actually understand the problem would come up with.
The word 'illegal' is a bit wide here, yes it is illegal if there is no reason but actually it is completely legal if immigrants are fleeing war, so as long as they support wars, there will be more ssylum seekers. But yes, for the average dutch, reducing the number of foreigners in general will give them the illusion that the Netherlands is back to them and that's what the current government promises
You've explained it yourself, about the sound mind part
The Dutch government (and the EU) have actually done a ton over recent years to curb illegal immigration. The deals they cut are often pretty shady, so it’s not promoted that much outside of people in the know. In short, the Dutch government pays off sketchy governments to stem the flow of migrants coming from the streams in which the migrants are most likely to not be legitimate migrants. Again, it is very tricky because unless and until an individual evaluation is done, we really don’t and can’t know whether someone individually has a legitimate asylum ground. However, the EU and NL target migrant streams most likely to be non-legit and pay off countries outside of the EU to stop those streams. The fact that the migrant streams went through those countries in the first place kind of shows that those countries were not very well organized in the first place and that bribes of officials were happening by smugglers. So yeah, rich countries ‘bribe’ (legal bribes though) those officials instead to stop the migrant flows and hope that the police and justice officials don’t just keep taking bribes from both sides. *shrug* In terms of deportation, that is also very difficult. The first step is proving where someone is actually from, which can take a long time considering language barriers, lack of documents, fraud, delays, etc. Then NL has to convince that country to actually take that person back. China has 1,4 million people living there already. Do you think taking people who left their country back into their country is at all a priority for them? There are also legitimate costs associated with relocation, so those countries are going to ask for money as well. Oh, and do you think various authoritarian countries treat these people who leave their glorious utopias well? Let’s not even start down that rabbit whole. So yeah, a lot has been done, but it’s not always promoted because most voters don’t want to know in too much detail what the actual consequences of their actions are when they demand their governments to “do something” about illegal immigration.
Publicity without much actual effort.
Immigrants, legal or illegal, has been made a scapegoat. Although the 30% tax ruling is a bit unfair I think using immigrants as scapegoat is a path we should stay far off.
Looking through asml and other big companies (they are locomotives of Dutch economy) distribution of workers, expats are doing a heavy lifting for the economy. So I would say the opposite that it is currently even not enough lure for highly skilled migrants.
‘problematic countries’?
people without papers disappear easily
Because govt is blind and deaf. They prefer to have illegal migrants and asylum seekers but don’t want tax paying legal migrants .
The (probably correctly) think that illegal migration is much smaller and much more difficult to further reduce and remedy.
On top of what is already said, immigration is the current boogey man. They don't want to solve it. This problem gives them soany voters! Why solve your money maker? No, they want to pretend they are solving it without acrually solving it.
Because it is easy to do that. As simple as that. Solving the refugee issue requires a lot of hard work, thinking and patience. NL as a country need knowledge and work related migrant to survive, they just don't have enough people who either have the skills or are willing to do the tough and boring jobs. Remember no real politician will ever try to solve a real problem.
there are no "good" or "bad" immigrants, there's just immigrants to these people. plain ol xenophobia
Because it’s easier to blame the immigrants than tackle a real problem
I am Italian and I have already seen all of this happening. The main problem in NL is not caused by asylum seekers, but with some second or third generation dutch guys. However the government will not do anything about it. They will go after legal immigration, eventually forcing someone to illegality, and they cause more problems so that the far right can speculate upon it. If a populist solve a problem they might be forced to change their politics and propaganda and start again from the beginning. They don't want it.
Because illegal immigrants barely cost our country money, if any at all, while providing us with labour. They are a labourforce operating below market prices in sectors that no-one wants to work in, without rights to healthcare, social security, housing- or any other kind of human rights in fear of being deported.. Basically modern slavery. Milton friedman already outlined this strategy at the time of the Reagan administration, and it has been practiced ever since. Source: am Social scientist
They do this cause they are ignorant bigots. The stupidity and decisivelessness is extreme
If you're thinking of the folks seeking asylum in Ter Appel, they aren't illegal immigrants. That's a totally different category.
Oh well, I guess ASML will have to go somewhere else. And any other large multinational. PVV voters will be happy, they won't have to deal with those stinking foreigners.
How do you think illegal immigrants from problematic countries reach us? Think they come here by boat? Swimming? Probably that's why we pay the EU to do better border control
Who says they are not doing anything about illegal immigration? This appears to be a paper dealing with the situation of legal immigrants. Why conflate the two?