In the Netherlands, the asylum-seeker controversy has flared up again as the chairman of main opposition Labour Party, Ruud Koole, denied in the face of liberal and christian criticism that he had urged Labour Party mayors to disobey the government's amnesty and deportation policy. Instead, Koole said he had requested LP mayors "to gather information over distressing situations of asylum seekers threatened with deportation". Koole's letter warned Labour Party colleagues against the harsh asylum seekers policy.
The immigration minister recently announced that 2,334 asylum seekers will gain a residence permit, in a government amnesty clearing backlog cases from the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service IND. But about 26,000 asylum seekers will be deported during 2004-2006 nevertheless. Many of these have lived in the Netherlands for at least several years, have jobs and are raising children. Communities have welcomed them, and outrage has been expressed by the Left at their looming deportation. The christians claimed however the social democratic stance was "scandalous and hypocritical", and the liberals claimed Koole's letter "was completely inappropriate". Parliament will debate the amnesty and deportation policy on Monday. The Immigrant Police carries out surveillance and inspection nowadays using biometrics, scans, and modern equipment to detect forged documents. Employers and landlords of illegal aliens can expect heavier fines, and deportation costs may be charged. Since December 2003, the IND controls all Dutch admission procedures, processes all Dutch residence permit applications and extensions, and can legally take up to six months to process a residence permit application. The IND is also responsible for issuance of return-visas, extended visas, emergency visas and residence related permits. Regular visa applications are still handled by embassies and consulates. In June 2003, the Netherlands opened the first of two "deportation centres" where illegal immigrants and rejected asylum seekers, including women and children, will be detained pending expulsion. The two facilities in Riotterdam and Amsterdam hold up to 600 detainees and cost about $43 million a year. They are part of "The Way to a Safer Society" programme created by christian Prime Minister Balkenende. A crackdown on immigration in the Netherlands began after 2002 elections, in which Pim Fortuyn's anti-immigrants party won more than 10 percent of the national vote. The current christian government has pressed ahead with many of Fortuyn's policies. The number of asylum seekers fell to around 20,000 in 2003, down from 44,000 in 2000, mainly due to tougher immigration laws. In 2002, 29,000 illegal immigrants and 21,000 asylum seekers were actually deported from the Netherlands. Another 15,000 were expelled in 2003. The total number of first and second generation immigrants is now 1.5 million, out of a total population of 16.2 million, and about 42.4% of those immigrants are non-Western. The bulk of the immigrants, in order of magnitude are from Turkey, Surinam, Morocco, and the Dutch Antilles/Aruba. In the Netherlands, two-thirds of all schools are denominational schools, and there are no limitations at all on the freedom of parents to choose to which school they want to send their child. Thus, there are no barriers at all against the phenomenon of 'white flight'. White parents do not send their children to schools which have a high percentage of immigrant children, and people talk openly of "black schools" and "black zones. One social worker said recently, "as much as we are called a multicultural city, we are living next to each other, and not with each other." This contrasts with e.g. Germany, because most schools there are public schools, which have no right to select students, and there are school districts within which parents must choose a school. Migrant children are the majority at 127 of the 201 primary schools in Amsterdam. Within that category, researchers from the Kohnstamm Institute found 102 schools where 70 per cent of pupils are from immigrant communities, and 52 that have hardly any ethnic Dutch children at all. Thirty schools in Amsterdam are virtually "white". Dutch sociologist Ruud Koopmans said in October 2003 that "For a long time, both people inside the Netherlands and outside the Netherlands, in other European countries, had the impression that the Netherlands was some sort of example to follow regarding multiculturalism and integration policies for immigrants. But if you look beyond the symbolic surface of tolerance in Dutch society, and you look at the hard reality of social, economic inequalities, Dutch immigrants do worse on the labour market, they do worse in the education system, they live more concentrated in ethnic neighbourhoods, where usually very few Dutch live, and the over-representation of immigrants in the Dutch crime statistics is also much stronger than in other countries." "On the surface, the Netherlands is more tolerant. The question is, to what extent presentation corresponds with reality. I think we must conclude there is a high degree of hypocrisy in this self-presentation, because if you look at real socio-economic inequalities in the Netherlands, they tend to be stronger than in other countries, and to some extent, as in the case of black schools and white schools, this is clearly a consequence of white behaviour - white parents taking their children away from black schools - and this is clearly a form of discrimination. They may say they are not racists, but in what they do it looks different." Dutch Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk argues all Dutch cities must accommodate their quota of asylum seekers granted residency status. But Rotterdam resists, arguing that it already has too many immigrants. Rotterdam was the springboard for Pim Fortuyn, whose "Liveable Rotterdam" party entered the city council after March 2002 elections. The Netherlands now has about a million Muslims, over 5.7 percent of the total population. The Dutch Central Planning Bureau (CPB) in a recent study claims "large scale labour immigration" cannot neutralise the financial effects of an ageing population in the Netherlands. Nor will large scale labour immigration positively affect the labour market, and the effect on wage levels is rather slight. But the CPB says "small-scale labour immigration" would benefit the Dutch labour market, especially if immigrants are highly skilled, between 14 to 45 years, have good job prospects, and fill vacancies which are difficult to fill. The fiscal impact of an immigrant they noted depends greatly on age at entry, and on class background. If their class background is like those of the immigrants already living here (in terms of skills, education and social security receipts), immigrants drain the public budget. But if immigrants share the same characteristics as the average Dutch resident, the result is more positive. The fiscal impact is calculated by the CPB as the net lifetime effect on public finance: tax collection and government spending. Immigrants in other European countries often are more successful in earning money, than immigrants in the Netherlands, because average immigrant wages and employment there are closer to equality with the indigenous population than in the Netherlands, where immigrant incomes are much lower. "The causes for the relative underperformance of immigrants into the Netherlands are not clear yet. This calls for further research", according to the CPB. Jurriaan
