Dutch Politics: Rita Verdonk

This blog is in English. For a large part, the reason is that this give me opportunity to dump things here I e-mailed to friends across the world. The other reason is that most, if not all, of my philosophical writing is in English, and this blog is intended for someof that writing as well.

However, occasionally, I get so worked up about things in my country of residence (not choice!), this swamp-by-the-sea, this Netherworld, Holland (or rather Netherlands as the country is officially known -- Holland being the pars pro toto, the most densely populated Western
provinces. Population density here is higher than Bangla Desh -- another swampy delta by the sea). My difficulty then is, should I write about the things that occupy me in Dutch or in English. I don't know but if you have any idea, let me know.

In the mean time, I feel I can no longer shut up about the actions and policies of Mrs. Rita Verdonk, the minister for immigration and integration. I have come to the conclusion that she is an evil person.

For sure, the political responsibility for immigration and integration is the most ungrateful job you could have, because you'll never do it right. Populist xenophobes will accuse you of being to soft; leftist liberals with cosmopolitan leanings will accuse you of being to stern. So with this minister. Furthermore, prior to being appointed as minister she had no political experience to speak of. I believe she was a prison warden before.

Mrs. Verdonk became minister at a time when Dutch attitudes towards migrants were changing (for the worse). She committed herself to the following olicies. First, she wanted to stop migration -- especially from lowly eductated people who came here to marry of join their family. It looks like she has succeeded in doing that. Secondly, she wanted to force new and old migrants to assimilate as quickly as possible. As for asylum-seekers, she wanted to apply the same policies: prevent asylum-seekers from going to Holland and try to evict them as soon as they had a negative decision on their application for asylum -- and preferably before that time.

She is quite vocal about these things. She has managed to get into the news every three months or so with another proposal or scheme. She has huge support from the Dutch population.

What is not generally noticed, however, is that most, if not all, of her proposals turn out to be unconstitutional or completely impractical. For example, one of her policies is that each migrant from Africa or Asia take a 'inburgeringstoets', an 'integration' test, which tests for general knowledge and basic linguistic skills in the country of origin. And while this might be a good idea (I doubt it) if we'd be a country like Canada or the USA where the official language is also the lingua franca of the world, it grossly overrates the presence and visibility of Holland in the world. Imagine where an inhabitant of Kirgizistan who wants to migrate to Holland has to learn Dutch?

But the most objectionable is that this is a policy that officially aims at integration, but it is used as a means to keep out immigrants.